Unofficial transcript of the Press Conference of the 31st meeting of the heads of peace missions in West Africa on Friday, 1 December at UNMIL Headquarters conference center, Pan African Plaza, Monrovia.

Moses Garzewue-LBS/Voice of America Stringer

Qn1. Well, when statements of such come from international agencies, it tends to create some kind of satisfaction on one side and dissatisfaction on the other side. I remember the statement from the U.S. Embassy when they also stressed the need for meeting up with the constitutional time limit and also the one that came from the European Union. Now you are stressing constitutional time limits and the process is in court in Liberia; how important is the judicial process to you in terms of telling the parties to also exercise that restraint so that the judicial process can go on smoothly?

SRSG Zarif’s response: What has gone into this statement is in conformity with the constitution and law of Liberia. Expeditious conclusion of the electoral process is the intent of the law which has prescribed very firm timelines for each aspect of the process, from the complaint to the litigation and adjudication and delivery of decision at various levels where the law has envisaged power to those institutions are expected to be respected. So nobody is asking any short-cut approach. Everybody is calling for respect for the legal constitutional time frame established in your own laws. We have had 20 aspirants for the position of the president and as you know only two of them will emerge at the run-off, at the second round of elections, if that is the decision that the Supreme Court will eventually take. And then, out of the two of them, eventually the people of Liberia will be selecting only one, so 19 of them will be unhappy because they are all aspiring to become president. So there will be 19 unhappy souls who will be defeated in the process because the people of Liberia would have spoken and would have selected their final ultimate leader for the next tenure of the presidency of the country. Our call, collective call on behalf of the SRSGs’, is for all to respect your own laws, to respect your own constitution, and make use of all avenues that are made available in the law, in conformity with the spirit of the law. That is, do so in the exercise of your legitimate right and be sure that it is in good faith and the claim or the complaint is legitimate. Don’t abuse it just to stagger the process, prolong the process beyond reason. That will cause frustration amongst the people and will eventually, probably result in the defaulting of the constitutional timelines. Thank You.

Follow-up question (Pete Kehler from Liberia News Agency (LINA))

Quick follow-up Sir. Did this meeting engage political leaders in the country, especially those involved in the protest and the election commission so forth, for in-depth understanding of root causes?

SRSG Zarif’s response: They did not. However, most of our reporting that go to our headquarter are shared with our colleagues because they have a stake in knowing adequately the developments in the neighboring countries and in West Africa, so as to always be constantly aware of the potential ramifications of developments in one country over the situation in the other countries.  So you should expect all of them to be well informed of what’s happening in Liberia, not just through the media but also through constant reporting from the mission and also through other sources including observation, reports filed by the international observer and monitoring missions who were deployed to Liberia during the elections. They have not engaged with any local actors, which is not part of their intention. Thank You.

Anthony Stephens-Power TV

Qn2. Mr. SRSG of UNMIL, I heard you saying that the parties that have grievances   should exercise their rights through good faith. Could you explain what that means?

SRSG Zarif’s response: The constitution and laws prescribe avenues in due process for all those who have grievances with regard to any aspect of elections; and that enables the litigants, those who are complainants, to go and make use of these avenues for the purpose of seeking redress and relief. As you know, a number of political parties in their own wisdom concluded that the first round of elections was coupled with massive irregularities and there were plenty of mismanagement and flaws in the first round of elections. Therefore, they complained to the National Elections Commission with regards to the integrity and credibility of the first round. And according to the law, the first stage of litigation is the hearing officers’ level of the NEC. During the described period of time, the parties made their case before the hearing officer and after having received the verdict, the ruling of the hearing officer and after having seen that they are not satisfied with the outcome, they appealed to the board of commissioners of the national elections commission which is the second appellate level of complaint, and they had the opportunity to explain their position, produce their evidence and tried to argue their case in favor of a revisit of the first elections; or, in one particular case, further improvement of the quality of elections if there is going to be a run-off. The board of commissioners also confirmed and affirmed the position of the hearing officer, declining the petition of the complainants and that forced the litigants to appeal to the Supreme Court in order to seek redress at the highest level of judiciary in Liberia. And as you know, the constitution of Liberia appoints the Supreme Court of Liberia as the ultimate authority to make decisions that cannot be appealed anymore. As we speak today, the Supreme Court of Liberia is hearing the case of the litigants, and they will also give the opportunity to the National Elections Commissions to provide their re-arguments and rebuttals, and hopefully within a reasonable period of time, they will take the decision on the basis of the evidence that is before them, and in the best interest of the country. As you know, the ultimate objective of all of these processes is to ensure that the will of the Liberia people would have a, will be respected and will be the ultimate choice for the leadership of the country. Thank You.

SRSG Zarif continues after Dr. Chambers’ response……………if I may add just a word to what Dr. Chambers just stated, I would like to compliment and warmly thank the media also for the role that they have been playing. Some of you have been participants in my regular and frequent meetings in the course of what we have discussed; the responsibility of the media, that social responsibility towards educating the people, informing them and at the same time making sure that the precious peace that Liberians enjoy will be preserved. And I must admit that the media played a very, very important role in making sure that violence is completely ruled out by their repeated calls, through their editorials, and through their commentaries, on all political parties but also on all segments of the society, that for the sake of democracy, for the sake of peace, everybody must abide by the laws of the country and remain peaceful and non-violent. So thank you very much for the role that you have played so far and I hope this will continue in the future.  

Arthur Douglass-ELBC/LBS

Qn3. I have a few concerns, these words you have just spoken, I mean the statement you read: they are words of caution and advice or maybe warning. If my interpretation is correct, then may I ask whether there are fears that should these processes ongoing now, the legal processes, go beyond the constitutional limitations, what fears do you have? Should the court come down with a ruling that to say there should be a re-run, are there fears also? My second point of concern is you talked about parties that are actually raising issues to do these issues in good faith. I am of the conviction that UNMIL and other international partiers have been following the processes very religiously. Do you sense bad faith in these legal processes by the political parties? And the final one is: How would you respond to critics who would term your statement as interference into the local politics? Thank You.

SRSG Zarif’s Response: Just to add a little bit of additional flavor to the full and convincing answer provided by Dr. Chambers, the four issues that were raised whether we are concerned and worried that there will be a situation that could be unwelcomed; if we were to be guided by the trend so far, I would say there is no reason for us to be worried. For the first time, Liberians who had grievances against a very important political process, have not taken to the streets; have not started hurling rocks at government buildings; have not engaged in fist fights in the streets; and engaging in violent demonstrations, against one another or against the rule of law actors. They have also been behaving properly in their public discourse; while expressing disagreements with one another, they have avoided by and large slandering one another, using inappropriate words, and engaging in character assassination. So that’s also very important element. And if you go by that experience, as you know during the elections we had close to 650 rallies, campaigns and mass appearances and only in 12 of them, there are very limited, very limited number of altercations I should say because it didn’t even go to the level of fighting. Only two injuries were reported. And this is new for Liberia; this if the first time that everybody wants to remain within the law, expressing their disagreements without engaging in violence to show their disagreements. So, based on that, I see no reason for us to be worried. That brings us to your second point: that should the Supreme Court decide to order a re-run, would that be a reason for us to be worried. Now the Supreme Court can only take one of these two decisions, either to ask for a re-run once they are convinced that the first round of elections were marred to the extent that it invalidated it, and it denied it legitimacy and integrity and therefore it has to be reorganized, once they are convinced to go that path, then the group that didn’t want it will be unhappy of course. However, there comes the role of the leadership of the political party and of the followers of that party including the international community to make sure that the same courage that they have expressed throughout this process by remaining law abiding, peaceful, that same courage will be displayed in accepting the decision of the ultimate authority, which is the Supreme Court. Commitment to that important principle of the law is very, very important. We will expect all parties-losers and winners-to respect the decision of the Supreme Court. We will be also exercising our good offices to make sure that they are constantly reminded of the expectations of the international community and you as media I’m sure will be saying exactly the same thing-this is the court ruling and this is the ultimate authority, we will just follow it.  There would be of course other persons here and there who would be expressing anger but then the maturity of the society would be stronger than those agitations. I think Liberia has come of age; I think Liberia is demonstrating everyday evidence of their maturity in their strive to strengthen their democracy in this country. Therefore, I believe that even if there is a decision that one or the other party will not like, they will all be behaving in a civilized manner and remain law abiding until the process is ended.  Now in connection with faith-good faith or bad faith-it’s a matter of perception. If a process is staggered and prolonged beyond a certain time limit that is perceived as a dielectric tactic, then the perception will be that this is not for the purpose of attaining a legitimate objective; it is to frustrate the law from being fully implemented. But that’s a perception matter; you don’t have an instrument by which you could measure the degree of faithfulness and unfaithfulness in the process. So, let’s leave it to those who will be expressing that disagreement. Our call that everybody should have a legitimate cause and act in good faith in pursuing the legal process does not accuse anybody. It is just an expectation that I’m sure is harbored also by the vast majority of the Liberian people. The law itself is meant for the purpose of avoiding bad faith activities, so it is also in conformity with expectation of the law itself. And the last point on interference: what is interference? You have to have a very good definition of that. Our presence here with large number of troops getting involved in capacity building, giving advice and mentoring and, is that interference or is it supporting the Liberians in doing the right thing? We came here with 16,000 troops; we spent here 14 years; we spent $7 and a half billion dollars in order to do things that are inherently Liberians-the breakdown of law and order was a Liberian situation; the breakdown of governance and rule of law was a Liberian situation; we came here to help you fix those things. Do you consider that interference?  If we now tell you that the law that you have created in your own free will and you are expecting everyone to abide by that, if we tell you to respect the law, will that be interference? And do you also think that it will be interference if we tell you that all the investments that you have made throughout these years and all the investments we as international community has done, in bringing Liberia from its immediate past conflict to where it is today, would it be interference for us to tell you to sustain this, preserve it and build on it; don’t allow the country to slip back into a conflict. Don’t give up on your insistence on the law, on due process? Would that be interference? And where did we say anything that will go beyond that, beyond the call of your own constitution?  Thank You.    

Evelyn Dahn from United Methodist radio

Qn4. Thank you very much. Yes want to ask this question. In Liberia today many see this process to be delaying .As the International community can you be able to help these people to speed up?

SRSG Zarif’s Response: We have been calling upon everybody that; do exercise all the legal avenues available to you in order to seek satisfaction under the law. And in fact we warmly welcome the fact that people are going to the due process instead of going to the streets or into the bush. That’s very, very good! This is a good manifestation of the commitment of the Liberian politics, people and of the media, civil society together that enough with the use of force in order to achieve ones objective. We are going to use law in order to seek satisfaction and redress. So we welcome that. But then if there is a point where the delay goes beyond what the law has allowed, then the of course law has provisions to stop that. That is why the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court ordered the NEC to conclude all the litigation process within 30 days that the law prescribes. There are situations that will be beyond control and some of these timelines could be defaulted. Like the holding of the Runoff because the litigation has been postponed. Now hopefully, the Supreme Court will take decision with the time frame of seven days of application, since or since the appeal has been launched to them and that would pave the way for the future steps to be taken ,whichever way you they decide. Thank you.

Pete Kehler from Liberia News Agency (LINA)

Qn5. I just want to digress little, and may be not trade fully the path of optimism, are you preparing, because in planning there is always room for worst case scenario, what if there is a re run based on the judgement of the Supreme Court? What are the backaches? Certainly will require funds, Will the will goodwill be there? What about a probable security breakdown? Is your standby force already doing some drills to run into Monrovia?

Answer: SRSG Zariff:  Now let me answer that question with a question. What do you expect of us would we be void of any scenario development and we will just focus on one outcome? Or we would we would be prudent enough to think of all the potential outcomes and prepare ourselves accordingly.

I think that’s enough.