IPNEWS-Monrovia: According to the Secretary General of the former ruling Unity Party (UP), Mo Ali, the Office of the Standard Bearer of the Unity Party has officially received and signed for a subpoena from the Monrovia City Court to testify in the ongoing Framework Document alteration allegation case.
Mr. Ali in a statement posted on the official page of UP, stated “The party wishes to inform the public that the Standard Bearer will honor the court’s order and appear.”
Former Vice President Joseph Boakai is the current Standard Bearer of the Unity Party. He is being subpoenaed by the Monrovia City Court to testify as a state witness against his fellow opposition colleagues in ANC political leader and standard bearer, Alexander B. Cummings, ANC national chairman Senator Daniel Naatehn and AN Secretary General Cllr. Aloysius Toe for Forgery and Criminal Conspiracy having been accused of All Liberia Party (ALP) Benoni Urey for alleged altering the Framework Work Document of the Collaborating Political Party (CPP) and submitted to the National Elections Commission (NEC) with constituents parties’ consent. The ANC and its leaders have denied ever tempering with the Framework document.
A fortnight ago, the media reported that the UP Standard Bearer refused to accept a subpoena from the Court’s Sheriff, after he proceeded to Mr. Boakai’s home in the Rehab Community in Paynesville only to be told that the former Vice President had gone out on a visit.
The newest development about the former VP testifying comes weeks after the Court Sheriff informed the public about the difficulty in locating the former VP to serve him the subpoena.
The delay then forced the Ministry of Justice, which is prosecuting the case, to appeal to Magistrate Jomah Jallah to grant prosecutors’ request of deposition as a means of having Boakai answer questions under oath as the state witness in the ongoing criminal trial of Cummings.
But with Boakai having now received the subpoena, it is yet unclear what the magistrate’s next step will be whether to grant the deposition appeal as part of the prosecution’s right to preserve testimonial evidence, or reject the disposition request, and allowing the subpoena to take its course and have Boakai, who is now the state’s second witness to testify in the ongoing trial of Alexander Cummings and other members of the ANC.
Whatever the Magistrate’s decision might be, the former VP will one way or the other testify against his opposition colleague, who he worked with for a few years as one of the leaders of the Collaborating Political Parties.
And he will share with the court what he knows, specifically as it relates to the copy of the framework document submitted to the National Elections Commission by Cummings while serving as chairman of CPP, as well as other information or documents that prosecutors need to implicate Cummings in the commission of the act.
Prosecutors are heavily relying on the former VP’s testimony, which they believe is valuable to them in the criminal trial against Cummings, the political leader of the ANC, and his co-defendants, the party Chairman Daniel Naatehn and Secretary-General Aloysius Toe, due to his firsthand knowledge about the CPP framework document, which prosecutors alleged were altered by the defendants.
The ANC officials have vehemently rejected and denied the charges as bogus, and politically motivated as part of conspiracies between the All Liberian Party of Benoni Urey and the ruling CDC with ulterior motives.
