GANTA, Nimba – After the Nimba delegation walked out of the impeachment proceedings against Associate Justice Kabineh Ja’neh, Rep. Gunpue L. Kargon and Rep. Roger Domah have provided reasons for walking out of the pivotal August 28 impeachment vote.

The Nimba lawmakers said they felt that Speaker Bhofal Chambers was not following the established rules of the legislative body.

“I think this is a process that is being stage-managed; people are just trying to use the appeal by Nimbaians to tribalize this whole thing,” said Domah, who represents Nimba’s seventh district.

Domah said members of the Nimba County Legislative Caucus and other members of the House decided to leave the hall after the speaker ignored a motion for voting to occur based on headcount, as opposed to a voice vote.

“We wanted to do head counts, instead of voice vote because the headcount will clearly show those who are for, those who are against, and those who abstained,” Domah added. “The speaker denied the motion. So, that kind of critical national issue, for you to go and start playing with it like you playing with some children, we felt that we could not sit to see those kinds of things happening—to legitimize their illegal activities. So, we all walked out.”

Kargon, who represents Nimba’s fourth district, concurred with Domah: “We were eight from Nimba County that were present yesterday, with the exception of Hon. [Samuel] Kogar; and all of us decided to walk out. Impeaching somebody is not something you can do undercover—we said the vote should not be ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ – we should do head counts.”

Besides complaints with the voting process, Domah said the impeachment bill should have been reviewed by the already existent Committee on Judiciary Affairs, instead of by an ad hoc committee.

“The Judicial Committee has lots of legal-minded people on it, but you decided to put the Judicial Committee aside to set up another committee that got lots of people who are not legal minded to carry on this responsibility,” Domah added.

Justice Ja’neh hails from Nimba, and a recent petition was presented to the House of Representatives by a group of Nimbaians calling for the impeachment proceedings to be terminated. However, despite the general view that the Nimba lawmakers are moving to protect one of their own, the two lawmakers said their dissent is more based on the need to follow established procedures.

“I don’t want people to see this thing like [a] Nimba issue,” Kargon said. “This particular thing is a state issue that we are following.”

However, both Domah and Kargon added that, should all legal procedures be followed, they would still vote against the impeachment proceedings because there are not enough facts available to convince them to vote for the impeachment of Ja’neh.

The bill of impeachment brought against Ja’neh was initiated by two lawmakers of the governing Coalition for Democratic Change —Rep. Acarous Gray and Rep. Thomas Fallah. They have outlined the misuse of office and official duty and proved misconduct as part of the legal backing for the impeachment.

After the House passed the bill of impeachment, the Senate is now in charge of conducting the impeachment trial, presided over by Chief Justice Francis Korkpor, who also hails from Nimba.

Featured photo courtesy of Rep. Roger Domah