11 say the intent of the Legislature, placed in its proper context, which is that presidential appointees are not allowed to take advantage over other in the process of competing for elected positions using their offices and the government resources, if best carried out with reasonableness, and viewed without the realm of absurdity, would clearly not be applicable to Mr. Karnwea, and that therefore, the Chairman of the National Elections Commission erred in construing the sections as he did, thereby making them applicable to Co-appellant Karnwea and barring him, on the basis of that misconstruction, from vying for or contesting for the office of vice president of Liberia to the presidential bid of Charles Walker Brumskine on the ticket of the Liberty Party in the ensuing 2017 Presidential and General Elections. In that connection, the appellants stressed that “the intent of the Code is not to punish everyone who ever worked for government, but to ensure that those presidential appointees who have the desire to run for elective public office do not do so at the expense of the taxpayers and to the disadvantage of other contestants in the political race.” To avoid sections 5.1 and 5.2 being relegated into the realm of absurdity, they maintain, focus must be placed on the word desire, which they define as "to wish or long for; crave; want; to express a wish to obtain; ask for; request”, which they emphasize is key to the interpretation of the sections relied on by the appellee. The intent of the section prohibiting a person situated as Co-appellant Harrison S. Karnwea, Sr. from contesting an elective public office is that he must have manifested a desire to engage in the political activity. Placing the term in the context of section 5.2, the appellants make the argument that “Co-appellant Karnwea did not desire, and could not have desired, two years ago to be the running mate of Charles W. Brumskine, the presidential candidate of the Co-appellant Liberty Party, and therefore, could not have resigned; nor could [he] have reasonably been expected to resign two years ago.” They argued further that had the appellee taken cognizance of the four points articulated by the Court in the Polson case, which formed the yardstick for the disqualification of a political candidate, it would not have concluded that Co-appellant Karnwea fell within the prohibited conduct since he not only did not harbor any political ambition when he held the position of Managing Director of the Forestry Development Authority and