By Joseph O. Sayon
The House of Representatives Tuesday, July 2, 2019, voted with reluctant to defer the passage of the draft law to allow individual lawmakers to review it in line with their respective constituents.
Tuesday’s deferment came in spite of the “protest of appeal” by some elderly women from the West Africa Network for Peace building (WANEP), in their dominant white, staged on the grounds of the Capitol Building.
Other women and youth groups, including women from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, joined similar protest and the indulgence of the House’s Joint Committee on Judiciary, Gender and Good Governance on the passage of the critical and landmark Domestic Violence Act.
Nimba County District #1 Representative Jeremiah Koung on Tuesday, July 2, 2019, during the 43rd day sitting, proffered the motion that the Domestic Violence Act be dissected and brought back on the House’s Agenda on Tuesday, July 9.
But a motion for reconsideration against the time for the comeback of the bill was proffered by Montserrado County District #8 Representative Acarous Gray, and the vote carried that the draft bill should return on the House’s floor on Thursday, July 4, 2019.
Twenty-eight Representatives against six voted to modify the motion for Thursday, July 4.
Amid the highly expected passage of the Domestic Violence Act yesterday, some political pundits believed that the Tuesday’s meeting with the leadership of the House of Representatives by members of the Diplomatic Corps, and their attendances in Session to witness the debate of the bill, might have caused the setback of the passage of the bill.
United States Ambassador Christine Elder, UN Women Country Director Marie Goreth Nakazima, and Swedish Ambassador Ingrid Wetterqvist, including a representative from the European Union and other international organizations, were part of Tuesday’s session.
Political analysts believe that the Liberian government might be under pressure from the international community to approve the Domestic Violence Law of 2014, but that the practice of the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) be included in the bill as an illegal act. This assertion could not be independently confirmed up to the publication of this story.
Meanwhile, Grand Kru County District #2 Representative J. Fonati Koffa, who chaired the Joint Committee on Judiciary, Gender and Good Governance, expressed the hope of the passage of the bill on Thursday, July 4, while Gender Minister Wilhelmina Piso Saydee Tarr expressed the women’s disappointment of the delay over the passage of the bill.
