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26 be certificated or not to participate in or contest any elective public position, whether in a general election, by election or any other public elections. This Court will accept nothing short of adherence to this sacred constitutional principle. Predicated thereupon, we hold further that the Respondent national Elections Commission was in grave breach, both of the Constitution and the statutory laws of Liberia, including the Elections Law, in not according to Co-appellant Harrison S. Karnwea, Sr. and the Liberty Party the right of a hearing before deciding that Co-appellant Karnwea, the vice presidential aspirant on the Co-appellant Liberty Party ticket, was rejected and disqualified from contesting the mentioned position. The Regulations promulgated by the Commission itself mandates that the Commission will adhere to the due process of law. NEC’s Candidate Nomination Regulation, issued May 6, 2016, Article 11, under the caption “Scrutiny of the Candidate Nomination Application, at paragraph 11.1 states unambiguously that: “During the candidate Nomination period, the NEC may take all lawful steps that it deems necessary, including the holding of hearings, to verify that information and documentation submitted by potential candidates are accurate and that the candidate is qualified under the Constitution, the New Elections Law, and other laws of Liberia and NEC Regulations.” That Regulation clearly sets out the NEC’s recognition of the need for a due process hearing before it makes a decision in respect of deciding whether a candidate should be barred or is disqualified from contesting an elective public office. And while the Regulation uses the word “may”, the NEC does not have the discretion or the option of deciding whether to grant the due process to an aspirant or not, given that the right is a mandatory one under both the Constitution and the statutory laws of the land. The adherence to the due process of law principle is made even more manifest by the fact that this Court, in its Opinion in the case Selena MappyPolson v. Republic of Liberia, decided on March 3, 2017, at its October Term, A. D., 2016, very clearly stated that the Code of Conduct did not stipulate as a penalty for any noncompliance with or violation of the Code of Conduct the sole or lone penalty of disbarment from participation in any public elections. To the contrary, the Court, disagreeing with the petitioner’s contention that

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Karnwea v. National Elections Commission

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether an investigation is necessary to prohibit a candidate from running when they allegedly do not meet the qualifications? Whether the Election Commission may go beyond the statutorily prescribed penalties for not meeting a qualification?

Alleged Acts: Co-appellant, Karnwea, was seeking the Vice Presidency under the Liberty Party and was barred from participating in the October 2017 elections on the bases that he did not meet the two year requirement for resigning from a public corporation in the Code of Conduct. The co-appellant resigned several months prior to filing his application for certification to contest the particular elective office.

Procedural history: The court found that the Election Commission’s notice of rejection only had evidence that the Chairman signed and decided the opinion, not the inclusion of any other members of the Election Commission. The co-appellant appealed directly to the Supreme Court rather than Election Commission’s remedial process.

Summary: The court determined that the record was devoid of investigation or hearing conducted in accordance with the bar from participating in elections and the appellants had not been heard regarding the matter. Further, there was no evidence that the Board of Commissioners outside of the Chairman were aware of the ruling. On the merits, the appellant argued that he could not have anticipated running two years before and resigned from his position because at the time he did not have political ambitions. Further, the appellant argued that the vice presidency is determined by the presidential candidate, not the vice president himself. The court determined that the word desire in the statute required a more thorough investigation into the facts. The court determined that the violation did not warrant disqualification from contesting the application, but that the Commission should impose a penalty within the Code’s stipulated penalties.

Conclusion: The decision of the National Election Commission was reversed and remanded for a determination of the penalty imposed on the co-appellant Karnwea.

Legal Issue(s)

Candidate Registration
Civil Procedure
EMB Independence

Region: Africa

Country: Liberia

Language of Decision

English

Court: Supreme Court

Election Type: Presidential

Date of decision: Jul 20, 2017

Geolocation

Latitude: 6.404914557

Longitude: -10.67993335

: Geolocation

Primary Documents

HARRISON-S.-KARNWEA-AND-LIBERTY-PARTY-V.-NATIONAL-ELECTIONS-COMMISSION-FINAL-JUDGMENT.pdf
English
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Election Judgments - IFES

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Karnwea v. National Elections Commission

Primary Documents

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