— Dissents to Supreme Court’s ruling
As the Supreme Court of Liberia on Wednesday delivered a major victory for Cllr. J. Fonati Koffa, legitimizing his claim to the Speakership of the House of Representatives, Associate Justice Yarmie Quiqui Gbeisaye cast the sole dissenting vote.
The two-page majority opinion, read by Chief Justice Sie-A-Nyene Yuoh, upheld the Court’s judgment as issued on December 6, 2024, that, “any sitting or actions by the Majority Bloc to the exclusion of Speaker J. Fonati Koffa, the duly elected presiding officer of the House of Representatives, while he is still present, and available to preside is unconstitutional.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling went on to mandate the Majority Bloc’s adherence to that initial ruling, citing “the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article 33 and 49 of the Constitution.”
The judgment arose from a Bill of Information, which Koffa had filed on November 22, 2024, arguing that the members of the majority bloc had violated the Supreme Court’s December 6th judgment.
In his strongly worded dissent, Justice Gbeisay cited procedural technicalities that rendered the Court’s consideration of the case inappropriate. Furthermore, he effectively endorsed the Executive Branch’s move to engage the House’s Majority Bloc in pushing the Fiscal Year 2025 budget through for ratification.
While acknowledging the impropriety of the move under ordinary circumstances, Gbeisay reasoned that preventing government collapse superseded constitutionality in the midst of the House’s prolonged leadership crisis.
Koffa Came in through the back door
According to Justice Gbeisay’s dissenting opinion, “whether right or wrong, Koffa’s bill of Information came to the Supreme Court through an improper means or, in our Liberian parlance, through the backdoor.”
He deemed Koffa’s November filing unacceptable in the face of the current Supreme Court rules. “This court cannot and should not encourage a party litigant to pursue what may be their right through a wrong path, as two wrongs cannot make a right,” he argued.
Instead, Justice Gbeisay opined that Joffa could have sought recourse elsewhere. He argued that any party who feels strongly that the rights declared by the court are being violated has the right to proceed to the appropriate tribunal to establish and prove who violated. He argued that such procedures “are factual matters that require evidence taking, which the Supreme Court is prohibited by the law not to do,” he wrote, adding that said evidence “cannot be established by a Bill of Information before the Supreme Court.”
Expediency trumps constitutionality
While not disputing Koffa’s claim that the Majority Bloc had taken possession of the 2025 draft national budget addressed to him as Speaker and unlawfully acted upon it – actions which, Koffa wrote, “violate Article 49 of the Constitution and Rule 10 of the House Standing Rules,” – Justice Gbeisay was unimpressed.
Responding to the Speaker’s petition that “the Court should declare the Bloc’s “illegal plenary” held in his absence “unconstitutional and all actions and decisions taken thereto, be also declared null and void,” Gbeisay struck a realist tone. “I must consider the political and legal acts of expediency under the circumstances of this case,” he wrote.
First addressing the convening of the Majority bloc as a House Plenary, Justice Gbeisay acknowledged the impasse dividing the body into Majority and Minority Blocs, but said, “they still have the right to sit in spite of the Supreme Court’s decision of December 6, 2024.”
“The Supreme Court has no authority whatsoever to stop another branch of government from performing its constitutional duty,” Gbeisay continued emphatically.
Taking the independence argument further, he noted that both the Executive Branch and the Senate had tacitly recognized the Majority Bloc as legitimate by engaging them in the budget ratification process. Gbeisay argued that, “the Majority Bloc, while sitting, had received the draft budget for Fiscal Year 2025 from the clerk of the House of Representatives, which was submitted by the President […] They deliberated on the draft budget and passed it, then, submitted it to the Liberian Senate which concurred by affirming the act of the majority bloc with respect to the passage of the budget.”
“The budget was submitted to the President to sign, which he did in line with his official duty,” he continued. “The expediency of these actions cannot go unnoticed by any reasonable mind and this court is not aware of what would have enlarged into an imminent chaos in the government of Liberia,” he said.
“By law the Fiscal Year for 2025 should have been submitted to the House of Representatives before October 31,2024, what then could the President have done in the midst of divided members of the House of Representatives,” Gbeisay wondered. “Wait until his government collapses because the fiscal budget has not been passed? Indeed, that would have been an unmindful act or a non-functional government to head.”
According to him, the Executive Branch acted promptly and politically by signing into law the budget that had been passed by the Majority Bloc of the House of Representatives and the Liberian Senate for the survival of the state itself. “This is now the 2025 Fiscal budget, which this government is utilizing to operate and which every branch of the government is drawing on,” he furthered.
The Law of Self-preservation
Gbeisay then drew on international jurisprudence to argue for national security over constitutionality. “Moreover,” he said, “the act of the Executive in passing the 2025 budget irrespective of the Legislative impasse is linked with the concept of self-preservation of the state.”
“This doctrine of international law,” he wrote, “prefers a state’s fundamental needs to protect itself, its citizens and its interest from harm or destruction, often in the face of external threats or internal instability. The Executive action [to engage the Majority Bloc in passing the budget] also finds support in public policy.”
He concluded, “respectfully” withholding his signature from the Court’s majority opinion and expressing “further hope […] that the [majority] opinion will be recalled in the immediate future by this bench or the succeeding bench.”
Crisis unaverted?
The present victory notwithstanding, Koffa’s case against the Majority Bloc looks to remain a going concern. His November 2024 petition claims the Majority Bloc illegally withheld the salaries and legitimate benefits due him and members of his camp, while illegally authorizing the disbursement of funds to certain of its own members for their personal benefit.
Koffa further accused the Majority Bloc of illegally invading the premises of the Office of the Speaker of the House by use of force, without authorization or court order, and refused to allow him to conduct business as Speaker. The Bloc also allegedly attempted an illegal recall of Koffa’s appointees to the ECOWAS parliament without cause or authority.
