Your Excellency:

You've done so much in the creation and sustenance of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and the world appreciates your contributions, as to allow inconsequential issues and characters to rollback your achievements. You've successfully fought against all odds to engineer the legislation of the Commission and you drummed up national and international supports to make the TRC what it is today and to make its initial achievements a substantive success. But news coming out of the TRC, as well as the Executive Mansion, regarding alleged interferences from officials within your office is worrying and antithetical to your demonstrated commitment to ensuring that the Commission realizes its mission and objectives to the fullest.

Rumors and allegations have over and over come to the public spotlight regarding the role of your office or some characters within your office to undermine and compromise the work and operations of the TRC. Recently, a strongly-worded press statement released by the Commission directly accused the Executive Mansion, which you head, of trying to undercut its work. Specific mention was made of attempts by the Mansion to whitewash an alleged war-crime perpetrator, Michael Davis, alias Sundaygar Dearboy, giving the impression that you, and by extension the Executive Branch of government, is out to shield wrongdoers from exposal via the TRC process.

While it is true that names are yet to be called in what is becoming a Dearboy saga, it might surprise you to note that gossips and suspicions are peaking within the public realm indicting you in particularly that you are working against the interest of your brainchild, the TRC. There are individuals and groups that hold the view that the Mansion has special interest and likeness for Dearboy and therefore doing everything within the imperial powers of the Presidency to contradict TRC findings and render the revered body pointless and nonentity.

For instance, Your Excellency, it is widely held in Monrovia, and probably across the country and abroad, that the Executive Mansion or some characters therein sponsored trips to villages of Grand Bassa County where Sundaygar Dearboy allegedly ordered the gang rape of a young woman and inflicted horrors upon other innocent villagers during the war years. It is said that the trips into the villages of Grand Bassa were intended to co-opt and mobilize villagers counterbalance testimonies made against Dearboy by residents from those villages who claimed that he raped, maimed and killed. Though the Executive is concurrently denying these allegations, the rumor mills and sometimes scenarios playing themselves out publicly are leading to more allegations and more suspicions that the Executive Mansion or some characters therein are fighting tooth and nail to blankly vindicate the accused war-crimes perpetrator.

Your Excellency, look at the recent public retraction of accusations made against Sundaygar by the accuser, a villager and penniless young man. At what point did he realize that he had told a “grievous lie”? Was it out of a natural urge that this young man who wept while earlier testifying against Sundaygar decided to come public again to contradict himself; more so associating a Commissioner of the TRC for masterminding his testimony and accusation? How did he access the media as to arrange a conference of journalists to make his somersaulting retraction? Surely, many compatriots are having difficulty swallowing the event, and they thinking of the same old Executive manipulation.

A candid analysis of these questions currently being debated by Liberians in every nook and corner leads to more questions and more suspicions regarding the role of your office or some characters therein. And these public suspicions and questions also come from the backdrop of the Executive Mansion’s special relationship with Sundaygar. He’s your praise-singer. His campaign lyrics kept your supporters spirited, and wooed undecided voters to you. Following the elections and your subsequent victory, you do tour around the world with Sundaygar exposing him to contacts and probably more resources. But that is not all. He’s placed closer to you personally with his naming as a Special Security Service officer. These scenarios, or some of them, don’t necessarily translate into establishing the truthfulness of the allegation that Executive Mansion is shielding Sundaygar Dearbor from penetrating TRC radar as well as interference in the TRC process.

But these scenarios what do is that they give more subtle accreditation to the allegations, particularly when you are virtually complacent and doing little or nothing to probe the suspicions and accusations. Unfortunately, Madam President, more and more testimonies are cropping up from villagers of Grand Bassa County alleging victimization in the hands of your Sundaygar Dearboy. Before ink got dry on the newspaper pages regarding Dearboy’s first accuser’s retraction, there came volleys of allegations and horror stories linked to and heaped on the alleged perpetrator, further shedding lights on while many hold the view that the retraction made by the first testifier need to be regarded with Eagle’s eyes and ears.

How do all these concern you? They do, particularly because you are silent on the Dearboy saga and doing little or nothing to draw a thick line between you and some unscrupulous staff that might be berating the efforts of the TRC in favor of the Dearboy’s image. Many are asking why you have not ordered a probe in your office to establish the veracity of the lingering saga. And because you have not been expressive in the matter, the public is having the impression that you value the character and image of Dearboy over the TRC process or those might be the victims of his wartime games. Madam President, the time is now to put to rest this vexing matter. And we would be pleased were you look around you, within your oval office and find the one throwing stones and hiding. If there is none, great! Make it public. But if there are Judases, keep them in check immediately. Let them leave the TRC alone to function.