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Mr. Austin S. Fallah, a prospective student of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, has observed that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report lacks the ability to bring about genuine peace and foster lasting reconciliation in Liberia.
Mr. Fallah, also a graduating senior studying for his Masters in Software Systems, is therefore calling on Liberians to reject the report because it is short on “substance” to unite the country.
In a Monday interview with The Liberian Journal, Mr. Fallah wondered “how such a body will submit a report that was not edited, and did not meet the consensus of the entire body, when the mandate given the commissioners was to work together as a team to produce a document that will reconcile the people, and make those who caused such a mayhem to account.”
Mr. Fallah noted that the TRC is yet to justify the exclusion of major actors from the list of those to be held accountable for acts against humanity in Liberia during the imbroglio.
“I am not suggesting that those who killed our people and looted their properties should not be held accountable, but excluding some of the major players from the list is a total deceit and un-nationalistic”, Mr. Fallah pointed out.
“For genuine reconciliation to take place in Liberia”, Mr. Fallah said, “Liberians must be willing to disarm their hearts from petty jealousy, peer envy and other ungodly thoughts and thinking that have the penchant to divide them more.”
Mr. Fallah wants the National Legislature to send the report back to the TRC and at the same time extends its mandate for another five weeks to enable it include suggestions coming out of the June reconciliation conference.
By doing so, Mr. Fallah believes, the Commission will have ample time to iron out its differences, incorporate recommendations of the Reconciliation Conference, which placed emphasis on reconciliation, and then submit an edited report.
Mr. Fallah said from the outcome of the conference, there are indications that Liberians are craving reconciliation, and not prosecution as being recommended by the TRC.
He warned that if all efforts are not exerted to maintain the fragile peace by focusing on reconciliation, Liberia and Liberians will not be taken seriously by the international community that put a lot in the work of the commission.
At the end of its work as mandated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by parties to the 14-year civil war and sanctioned by an Act of the Liberian National Legislature, the TRC among other things, recommended that some Liberians, including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, be barred from holding political offices for 30 years for supporting the war, and that those listed as warlords in its report be prosecuted.
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