Editorial: Mrs.Oumou Sirleaf-Hage Deserves Justice

The widow of the late Lebanese businessman Milad Hage, Mrs. Oumou Sirleaf-Hage and her children continue to suffer physical, emotional and psychological pains in their quest to repossess real properties left by their late husband and father.

The properties in question are being controlled by another Lebanese, Mr. Bassam Jawhary, who was initially given limited powers of attorney by the late Milad Hage prior to relocating in Lebanon along with his wife Madam Oumou Sirleaf-Hage and children where he died subsequently.

However, it is alleged, Mr. Jawhary rather without any consent of the Hage Family went to the Monthly and Probate Court at the Temple of Justice in Monrovia with to secure an Addendum Will and obtained a testate Bill, granting him the right as the sole Executor of the late Milad Hage’s property and assets in Liberia to the disadvantage of the widow and her children.

Mrs.Hage has vehemently opposed the legality of the Will and the standing of Bassam Jawhary as Executor for the Milad Hage’s properties and assets here. The widow has pleaded for justice, but justice seems yet far away, and her plight has claimed the attention of the ECOWAS Women of Liberia, who are expected to present a Statement of Solidarity and Support to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, seeking her intervention into the matter today.

“Madam President, our patience has been tried and exhausted. Our faith in and full obedience to the dictates of the rule of law, which guides your Administration and on which our country’s democracy is anchored has been challenged. We have seen the rule of law and our judiciary, the last bastion of justice, transparency and equal treatment of the individual undermined and even trampled upon”, the women read in the statement.

The women’s passionate appeal to the President to go to the aid of a grieving widow and her children we believe should serve as a litmus-test to her professed commitment to championing women rights and uplifting. Madam Sirleaf herself, a widow, is perhaps in the best position to listen to both sides of the issue to make sure justice is delivered where it is due.

Mrs Oumou Sirleaf-Hage and her children are under intense emotional and psychological agony in regaining what is legitimately theirs, and we think the President should give her plight immediate attention in finding a permanent remedy. The cry of a helpless widow and her children is a cry from God, which the President of a country should treat with utmost urgency in drying her tears.