SWAL Majority Bloc Counters LFA

A group comprising majority members of the Sports Writers Association of Liberia SWAL, has described as totally misdirected and disgraceful, report of an LFA-pronounced ban on Journalist Danesius Mateh from all football activities in Liberia.

According to the Spokesman of the group, Trojan Kiazolu, if the pronouncement attributed to the Liberia Football Association, through its Media Department, was anything to consider seriously, then the LFA was badly ill-advised.

The SWAL Majority Bloc stated that the Liberian Constitution was strongly emphatic about due process – meaning that any person deemed accused of an offense must be heard or given a day in a competent court of jurisdiction before condemning the person to guilt or punishment.

The media group is calling on the Ministry of Youth and Sports and other institutions mentioned in the LFA pronouncement, praying enforcement of its ban reportedly placed on Journalist Mateh, not to heed the FA’s quest as it runs counter to appropriate approaches and required processes. “We recall that when the LFA axed six of its Executive Committee members during the leadership of Cllr. Sombo Izetta Wesley, the Liberia National Olympic Committee was called in and played a key arbitration role in making sure democratic tenets through an extraordinary congress, was the medium utilized by club stakeholders to eject their representatives from the LFA Executive Committee, and not unlawful means insensitive to due process.” Mr. Kiazolu noted.

He informed the LFA that it was subservient to the laws of Liberia and the Olympic sport that it had the right to take its hard issues to the LNOC for arbitration locally because the NOC has the statutory responsibility of oversight on all Olympic sporting disciplines.

“As a Media group, we urge Journalist Mateh to continue discharging his reportorial duties in the strongest measure of the vigilance with which he has proceeded and not to fret about a pronouncement of a ban placed on him by LFA. In our best recollections as archievers and reporters on football in Liberia, the LFA cannot stop, and has not stopped any Journalists from covering and reporting on Football activities only because they feel strongly uneasy about his reportage,” He said.

“The doors of the Courts of Law are open to the LFA and any group of Liberians to adjudicate any and all issues of professional misconduct so the LFA should pursue such medium and desist from pretending to have run out of options,” the group’s spokesman indicated in a statement issued in Monrovia Tuesday..

By Ethel A. Tweh-Edited by George Barpeen