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Liberia news

Senate pardons Min. Konneh

Members of the Liberian Senate on Thursday pardoned Finance and Development Planning Minister Amara Mohammed Konneh for his reported disrespect and violation of the Liberian Constitution as claimed by that body.

The pardon follows an open apology by Mr. Konneh in the plenary of the senate Thursday, March 17, 2016. The apology follows a protracted political tension between the minister and the Senate. Mr. Konneh during the regular session of the senate openly apology for the content of the letter he wrote requesting the senate to do some adjustment in its budgetary allocation or else the ministry will be left with no option but to use its discretion.

His letter infuriated members of that body who claimed that he had arrogated to himself their function and therefore cited him for contempt and demanded his apology. But he had refused to apologize on grounds that his request to that body had no constitutional violation as was being claimed by the lawmakers.

The matter was dragged before the Supreme Court, but the Superior Court at a conference maintained that the Senators were well within their boundaries. Before his open apology on Thursday, Mr. Konneh had earlier apologized through a written communication addressed to senate Pro-Tempore Armah Jallah.

In that letter a copy of which was obtained by this paper , he asked the august body to accept his sincere apology, and drop contempt charges in the interest of advancing the nation’s development agenda.
The Minister stated in his letter: “I will not apologize to other ministries and agencies because I did nothing wrong. All me and my colleagues were trying to do was to say because of the poor recovery from Ebola, because of the decline in the prices of the two major commodities driving the economy of Liberia there will be a deficit in revenue collection to the tune of seventy million and as a government we need to reduce expenditure so that we can live within our means that is the letter we sent so I have no apology to make to that effect.”

By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor-Edited by Othello B. Garblah

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