By: Ayeason Yeeba
Email: ayeasonyeeba12@gmail.com
Contacts: 0880279714/0770376618
MONROVIA – Former Vice President Joseph Boakai to testify as a state witness in the ongoing trial of the political leader of the Alternative National Congress (ANC) Mr. Alexander Cummings on allegations of forgery on Tuesday, April 19, 2022.
Mr. Boakai is the second witness for the State in the ongoing trial.
Mr. Alexander Cummings and two other officials of the Alternative National Congress (ANC) are currently being tried for forgery and criminal conspiracy at the Monrovia City Court based on allegations by Benoni Urey’s All Liberian Party (ALP) a former constituent member of the deformed opposition bloc Collaborating Political Parties (CPP).
Cummings has denied the charges calling them “false and politically motivated”, while his supporters and partisans of the ANC have termed the trial a “political witch-hunt and persecution” intended to smear Cummings, dampening his momentum and excluding him from participating in the 2023 Presidential Elections.
At the time of the issuance of the writ of arrest for Cummings by the government, Boakai was the Rotational Chair of the CPP and has been publicly touted as the star witness for the government by the Solicitor-General who is leading the prosecution in the Monrovia City Magisterial Court.
Last week, Magistrate Jomah Jallah granted state lawyers’ request to have Mr. Boakai appear to testify for the State against the ANC Political Leader, its National Chairman Daniel Naateeh, and Secretary-General, Counselor Aloysius Toe.
But according to media reports, Boakai is preventing the court officers from serving a Writ of Subpoena Duces Testificadum on him.
The reports claimed over the weekend that the Former Vice President made himself impossible to be reached with instructions to his securities not to allow the sheriff to enter his Rehab residence. This is after the Solicitor-General publicly announced that Boakai will appear in court on Tuesday, April 19, as the “Star Witness of the government”.
The SG’s announcement followed Magistrate Jomah Jallah’s grant of State Prosecutors’ request to have Mr. Boakai appear to testify for the State against the ANC Political Leader, its National Chairman Daniel Naateeh, and Secretary-General, Counselor Aloysius Toe.
The CPP document in question is currently the subject of legitimation before the National Elections Commission as a faction of the LP led by embattled Chairman Musa Bility and the ANC tried to invoke sections of the document to prevent the ALP and the UP from fielding candidates in the upcoming Lofa by-election.
The UP and the ALP have both announced withdrawals from the CPP and are challenging this provision as “violating its constitutional right to associate or refuse to associate as provided for under Article 17 of the Liberian Constitution.”
But the CPP of the ANC and the Liberty Party are counter arguing that the UP and the ALP cannot be forced to remain with the CPP but having agreeably enjoined with them in a legally enforceable contract which the Framework Agreement represents, Article 25 of the Liberian Constitution, therefore, obligates the four parties and forbids any impairment of the enforcement of the contractual obligations upon them.
