News:
Chairman political Affairs Senator Edwin Snowe Jr.
March 2, 2022
Leader of the Liberian delegation to the Community Parliament, Senator Edwin Melvin Snowe Junior has said all is set for the upcoming Seminar and Extraordinary Session to be held in Liberia starting this week.
According to him the seminar is expected to center on the current political and security situation within the West African sub-region.
In a telephone interview, it came up clearly that, meetings of the ECOWAS Parliament has to compete with very important assignments of some member states parliament, a point in case is the Ghanaian Parliament that has a hanged parliament 137 :137 with an independent candidate, doing business with the Majority adding up to 138.
There is an Electronic Transfer Bill 2021yet to be passed with each side counting strongly on their numbers to either pass or reject the bill.
“We could continue to have this kind of problems because the first commitment is to our National Assemblies and ECOWAS Parliament becomes second, not until the Community Parliament can hold direct elections”.
And added that they are looking forward to seeing the Ghanaian delegation, as Mahama Ayariga First Rapporteur to the Committee on Political Affairs, Peace, Security and African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) has a key role to play in Liberia and is expected to make a presentation.
Another situation, he pointed out is that of the Nigerian lawmakers to the Community Parliament who are expected to vote on a constitutional reform this week, and as soon as that is done, they would move to Liberia over the weekend.
“One of our best institutions in our sub-region, when it comes to issues of political and security studies is the Kofi Annan Peace Keeping Institute in Ghana, so we have invited the director General of the institute who would be presenting a paper”.
Senator Snowe further pointed out that Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, who has a long history in mediation and security situation in the sub-region and the rest of the continent, would be presenting a paper, same with the former Nigerian President ECOWAS mediator on Mali H. E. Good Luck Jonathan would present a paper.
And the moderator of the session would be Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, “we would be looking at ECOWAS vision 2050; how does it conflict with the current political and security situation in the region, we are not looking at the future of ECOWAS and that future is being interrupted by barrages of coups over throw and constitutional changes leading to third term; we need to look at that, how does that threaten the future of ECOWAS”.
The Extraordinary Session which would be the Committee of the whole would have the Commissioner of Political Affairs for them to look into the nitty-gritty in other to look at the root cause of the current development within the sub-region and how they can remedy them.
He used the opportunity to thank the President of Liberia H. E. George Manneh Oppong Weah for his assistance, same with the governor of Liberia. “We look forward to full participation of the Liberian public”, he added.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com