House Speaker Chambers urges colleagues
House Speaker Bhofal Chambers ramped up a feud between Montserrado County District #s 10 and 16 Representatives Yekeh Kolubah and Dixon Seboe, respectively, with a caution to every lawmaker to avoid making “inciting, irritating and unfounded comments,” which have the propensity to bring the Legislature to public disrepute.
In Thursday’s session, Chambers sternly cautioned fellow lawmakers to mostly pursue legislative decisiveness and to act with decorum; to do and talk in accordance with their pay-grade.
“I will caution all of us that angry and long speech of accusations might be unjustifiable; we, who are leaders of this country, should desist from those acts,” Speaker Chambers said.
“We should act with propriety and do what is in accordance with our pay grades,” he said.
The Speaker’s advice was prompted by a communication from Rep. Seboe, accusing Rep. Kolubah of creating an unprecedented security risk against the banking sector, as a result of Rep. Yekeh’s “uninformed and baseless comments.”
Honorable Kolubah had a call-in on the OK FM radio show on December 4, 2019, and said that he had proof that the government had printed currency, and that it was brought into the country on Wednesday via Kenya Airways. His statement further claimed that the government is in money “laundering based on the facts that were available to him,” Rep. Seboe wrote.
“As chairman of the committee on Banking and Currency, I want to register that his statement does not only pose a security risk on the banks, as customers will be expecting to get Liberian dollars, which have been in short supply on the market from their different bankers, but will also pose a political risk on the entire country. Considering how porous the society is when it comes to information dissemination, Kolubah’s statement has the propensity to create a serious stir in the market, which could cause political unrest going into the festive season, if people are not able to get money that he has presumed to have been printed and brought in the country, from their different bankers.”
As the chair of the House Banking Committee, Rep. Seboe admitted in his arguments that US dollars were brought in the country on Wednesday by some commercial banks through the Central Bank of Liberia, including EcoBank Liberia, which applied to their international and corresponding international bank – Citibank.
Rep. Koubah, in his reaction in session, denied saying printed currency was being brought in the country, but admitted that “he has picture and video evidence of money being brought into the country, and if money is printed without the Legislature’s approval, that process is money laundering.”
