Lawmaker blames electorate

Bong County Representative Edward Karfia says Liberian electorate have misconception about the duties and responsibilities of lawmakers, thus they (Lawmakers) face serious challenges in earning something for themselves.

Speaking to reporters in Kakata, Margibi County recently, Representative Karfia lamented that if one conducted a survey to establish what lawmakers have done for themselves in the past five years, it would be surprised to note that most of their earnings or incomes are not being spent on themselves.

He said most of them make efforts to educate their various constituents on the duties and responsibilities of lawmakers, but they are still being misunderstood. Representative Karfia said this has made him unable to lay a single block for himself since he got elected.

Considering the fact that many of them make a lot of promises to the electorate during campaign, he said those lawmakers, who made big campaign promises to the electorate outside of the scope of their duties and responsibilities, did so out of ignorance, adding that this is suffering all of them as representatives of the people.

Representative Edward Karfia: “The major challenge is the fact that we are being misunderstood by the electorate. If you take a sample of what we have done in the space of five years as individual lawmakers, you will find out that most of us what we earn, we don’t even spend it on ourselves. Since I became lawmaker, I have not lain a single block”.

But the question many often ask is, are lawmakers elected to earn for themselves or to deliver major needs of the people through lobbying on their behalf in the cardinal functions of oversight and law-making.

Many lawmakers absolutely do nothing for their constituents after they are elected or until their terms expire. Most of them fail miserably at the ballot box in seeking a second term from the people, who are often left disappointed. By Ramsey N. Singbeh, Jr. in Margibi – Editing by Jonathan Browne