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For  Rigging several Elections 

A pro government Journalist, Philipbert S Browne, who is the Publisher of the Hot Pepper Newspaper has accused ECOWAS and the Western countries whose names he fell short of disclosing, of being complicit in vote-rigging in two successive elections in Liberia.

Browne made the claim over the weekend  in a series of his  social media  “Facebook” posts noting that he is  a witness to how the regional group and the West overturned election results twice in Liberia in favor of the former ruling Unity Party of ex-President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and her Vice President, Joseph N. Boakai, who is now the closest contender to incumbent President George Weah in  the upcoming October  elections. 

 “We lived to bear witness, how ECOWAS and the WEST, twice overturned the presidential elections in favor of the Unity Party Ellen Johnson Sirleaf EJS & Joseph Nyumah Boakai JNB. Did George Weah start a civil war?

“WHAT IS GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS ALSO GOOD FOR THE GANDER,” Browne wrote, to support his previous point that in the event the 10 October presidential election is rigged by the Weah’s regime, there should be no war, as certain opposition figures are predicting.

Browne, who is yet to show any evidence to substantiate his vote-rigging claim against ECOWAS, further claims that at the time the regional body and the West allegedly overturned election results in Sirleaf’s and Boakai’s favor against Weah, he supported such action because according to him, the retired footballer turned politician was ill-prepared to lead Liberia that was just coming out of a brutal civil war.

However,  a veteran Liberian  Journalist,  Charles B. Yates has strictly  reacted to Browne’s allegations,  questioning  the credibility and integrity of ECOWAS and the West and  calling  them to  respond to what he terms as a  grave allegations, through social “Facebook” post early Sunday morning September 24. 

Accoding to him,  for a senior journalist in the country to make these allegations in the wake of the country’s general and presidential election next month in which ECOWAS and the West are playing a major role is very alarming.

Under the Unity Party-led government  in August of 2014, Browne, then the publisher of a local daily, the National Chronicles, was  arrested by state security officers and jailed for publishing hate speech,  mis and dis information, and his newspaper was  shut down but  later established the Hot Pepper newspaper, which broke the news at the beginning of the Weah administration that the former soccer star’s regime was complicit in the alleged disappearance of some 16 billion Liberian dollar banknotes.