The Trial Of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - Episode VI

The Trial Of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Episode VI

            The media had made the trial prominent on the front pages. One local daily wrote, “Ellen Faces 11 Charges,” while another carried a banner headline, “Ellen Slammed With Treason…10 Other charges levied.”

            Newspaper vendors were divided on the trial, some for and other against. They were arguing among themselves. “I think the chicken has come home to roost,” one noted. But he was vehemently opposed by a female standing by. “You people are living in dream land; Ma Ellen will be free from those stupid charges.”

            A Fula man in front of whose shop they were standing remarked, “Me I selling bread and Manyonnaise, I non wan politic here,” pronouncing politics in the French accent. But he had hardly ended his word when a vendor who was serving a customer yelled without looking at the Fula man, “Close your mouth and cover your burned teeth…”

            “Yes, my teeth burned but da fineness, you don know da all,” the Fula man countered and went behind his counter to serve a customer.

            Meanwhile, the Hattai center on Carey Street was the place of attraction. Graduates who are yet to land themselves jobs, normally referred to as ministers of “Less Busy” were debating the trial of Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

            “I think this is preposterous, the charges are ambiguous frivolous and tantamount to erecting new pillars in the corridor of hate and vengeance,” a University of Liberia graduate said.

            “No comrade, I beg to differ with you. We must decipher good and evil. This woman is an epitome of every catastrophe and calamity that has plagued our common patrimony,” another disagreed. “She has to embrace of harsh reality and face the full weight of the law in the court of competent jurisdiction,” he added.

            A Tubman High student standing by agrees with the second speaker. “Can we jester pose the malevolent this female architect has done to manufacture our misery as oppose to the little good she has delivered?” He asked. “What we get is a translucent act of impishness that has unnerved our people in the abyss of doom.”

            Mamdee Diamady bit on his kola twice. Then he bit the third time, and interrupted the speaker, “Cholon, da big, big tin yor talky. Aye na bon,” he ended his sentence with a French word—meaning good. But a Cathedral student who took three minutes to listen to the debate burst into laughter. “Papae, this is what we call intellectual discourse, we are not selling kola here,” he said.

            But Foday Kromah, a UL graduate could not take the comment lying down. “Boy, what do you know about intellectualism. We are the custodian of cerebral disposition,” he said. “We have endowed ourselves with the indispensable knowledge to dissect issues, so just hush you mouth and stop your indiscretion against that old man,” he added.

            By then issue of Madam Sirleaf’s trial was far out of reached. Folks had engaged in personal attacks, showing off who speaks better English and who is possessed of a reservoir of vocabularies. One particular sophomore student delved on the grammar of every speaker. “There is no cohesiveness in your subject and verb agreement. You cannot use the verb “have” with the pronoun “he”, my friend,” he critiqued. “If you were in England you could be incarcerated for decimating the Queens’ language,” he added.

            “I leave you with this my young brethren,” said a lawyer who had been listening told them. “The issue under discussion is a determiner of what justice looks like in our jurisprudence. We must all ensure that this case vindicates all biases of our criminal justice system, or else we will have to re-write the justice history all over again,” he said and excused them.

THE TRIAL CONTINUES.