Regime Speaker Richard Koon of the House of Representatives is a happy man. He was unconstitutionally elected by the Majority Bloc in the House to replace embattled Speaker J. Fonati Koffa of the former ruling CDC.
According to members of the Majority Bloc, they illegally removed Speaker Koffa because of an alleged conflict of interest and for overspending his US$4 million budget.
They then illegally elected Koon and increased his budget to US$5 million. In their minds, this was OK for the Unity Party-led government’s so-called Rescue Mission.
But for heaven’s sake, what do we gain as a country in allotting US$5 million to the office of an illegitimate speaker, whom the Supreme Court of Liberia and influential members of the Liberian society do not recognize except the executive that supports his illegal ascendency.
We understand. They have come to rescue the country from corruption, economic hardship, and poverty, or so they had promised the Liberian people during the 2023 election.
And so with a US$5 million budget just for 12 months, a happy “Regime Speaker” Koon has reportedly begun building for himself a bigger house for comfort and current status, regardless of how badly this allotment is bleeding the National Budget.
While “Regime Speaker” Koon is benefiting from this amount of money for his illegal election, the budgets of the nation’s major referral hospitals combined, including JFK, Redemption, and Jackson Fiah Doe, have never exceeded US$1 million in an entire fiscal year.
But in what could be largely considered as a mere publicity stunt, perhaps to divert public attention from his elaborate budget, Koon visited the JFK Hospital in Monrovia and promised to increase its budget to US$20 million! This is too good to be true, especially when the United States Government has cancelled all USAID-sponsored programs for health, education, and infrastructure.
With US$5 million allotted to his office, while public hospitals and schools across the country lack basic drugs, equipment infrastructures and instructional materials, Koon has to present himself as somebody sensitive, though he’s been in the House for more than 12 years without raising on the floor, the poor state of health institutions in the country.
We caution authorities at JFK to take the promise of “regime Speaker” Koon with a pinch of salt because it is nothing but a mere bluff coming from an illegitimate Speaker who is on a campaign to fix his poor public image and erase the questionable manner through which he ascended to the Speakership and is being awarded US$5 million annually.
