Rep. Moima Briggs Mensah Expresses Disappointment.
By Agnes Tarr, Legislative Reporter
“When we got to the chambers for the Deputy Speaker election, the nomination process was opened and no one was willing to nominate me, not even the female!”
Those were the words of Bong County Electoral District #6 Representative Moima Briggs Mensah who expressed disappointment and accused House Speaker-elect J. Fonati Koffa of betraying her. Fonati Koffa betrayed me,” she told legislative reporters.
Rep. Briggs Mensah said Speaker Koffa did not look her way to return the level of support she gave him for his speakership bid.
She said, “Let the rich people dollarize the process, let them go for the cash they’re getting, but I have money to give anybody. What I have is service and good governance and better Liberia; better legislature that you will see yourself in us, [and] you will appreciate the process. Thank God I did not deceive Fonati Koffa; if he deceived me, I leave him with his God….”
Speaking further, Rep. Briggs Mensah noted that during the process of the election of held on Monday, January 15, 2023, she supported Kofa’s bid and was given an assurance by Koffa that the bloc was going to reciprocate her support for her quest of becoming the next deputy speaker.
But why the Bong lawmaker was waiting with bated breath to receive a swamp of support from the Speaker’s bloc, nobody nominated her for the position of deputy speaker. House Rules provides that a candidate for such a position should be nominated by a member of that body to be qualified as a contestant.
“Not even the females” nominated her, thereby widening her disappointment in the process.
But it wasn’t done for the Bong County lawmaker who belongs to the largest Bloc with the highest number of lawmakers in the lower house and had just won the speaker post.
The alleged refusal of her Bloc to nominate her for the deputy speaker position prompted Rep. Briggs Mensah to take to the media informing the public that the process was ‘dollarized’.
During the campain period for the Speaker and Deputy Speaker elections, Rep. Briggs Mensah said she wholeheartedly supported Cllr. Koffa’s bid for Speaker and she was assured of being nominated for the Deputy Speaker position.
She further explained that after the vacancy was announced, no one could nominate her as being promised by her team.
Due to what she described as a “betrayal”, Briggs Mensah did not take part in the voting process for the Deputy Speaker post.
The Bong Representative is her second term as lawmaker. In 2018 she contested for the deputy speaker post and was defeated by speaker-elect Fonati Koffa.
