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14 impress upon Counsellor Brumskine that he, the Co-appellant, be considered for the position and that he may have made such overtures for any number of reasons, including securing the vote of a large population base, injecting substantial financial contributions to the campaign efforts, etc. But all of those would lead the Court into the realm of speculation, which the law forbids the court to indulge in. This point out only that in defining desire, it should not be perceived in the narrow context which the appellants have placed it. Further, while a facial examination of the appellants’ argument seems to be appealing substantially to a reasonable inference of a logical conclusion, we are not persuaded by same, for although the law always begs of logical conclusions, in most instances, the converse of this does not yield similar results, as logic frequently may fall short of any legal support. To accept the appellants’ line of argument that no one desires of being a vice presidential aspirant until he or she is selected by a presidential aspirant would similarly mean that no one desires of being a presidential aspirant until such person selects his or her running mate in consonance with the appellants’ own political complementarity theory. This is true because in as much as the appellants are correct that no one applies to run for the office of Vice President without an indication of a complementing presidential aspirant, no one similarly applies to contest as presidential candidate without a showing of his or her vice presidential candidate. The two offices are seismic twin, hence to predicate one’s desire of running for the office of vice president on the absence of he or she being nominated by a presidential aspirant would provoke the argument that one cannot be said to have the desire of contesting for the office of the president without a showing of his or vice presidential candidate. The framers of our organic law being mindful that these two offices cannot be politically severed, construed similar and single set of qualifications for persons desiring of occupying said offices by stating thus: “No person shall be eligible to hold the office of President or Vice President, unless that person is: a) a natural born Liberian citizen of not less than 35 years of age; b) the owner of unencumbered real property valued at not less

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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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