Speaker Snowe Held Hostage, Was it Masterly Planned?

Efforts to resolve the ongoing crisis which engulfed the House of Representatives for almost a month now has again received a serious setback when hundreds of ‘would be supporters’ stormed the residence of the embattled Speaker, Honourable Edwin Melvin Snowe to prevent him from joining his colleagues at the Unity Conference Center.

Earlier the Speaker in his Wednesday called press briefing promised that he would join his colleagues (the minority bloc) at the Unity Conference Center in Virginia, outside the City of Monrovia in a bid to end the crisis in the legislature.

He told reporters that his decision to go to Virginia was not our of what he called “weakness” but a patriotic effort to end the crisis, following several appears from church leaders, youth and women groups and diplomatic circles.

The following day, the day he should have left for the Virginia meeting his house was surrounded and barricaded by hundreds of youth and women groups preventing him from leaving his house for the meeting.

The supporters mostly women and youths who converged at his residence and barricaded both gates to his house also threatened to smash his convoy if he attempted to come out of his house, the supporters insisted that they elected Speaker and as such he must obey their wishes.

The dramatic which lasted up to six hours yesterday surprised many, especially those in the diplomatic circles as normal activities were paralyzed due to the movement of the Snowe supporters in the Paynesville area.

Observers believed that this action on the part of Speaker Snowe’s supporters was said to be a master plan of the Speaker himself, “perhaps this whole thing was organized so that people will feel that Snowe is up to peace and that he wanted to attend the Virginia meeting, but was stopped,” a residents of Paynesville in a chat with the GNN said.

However, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Togbah Mulbah was at the Conference Center to join his colleagues. He told reporter that he was there in order to move the country forward through their deliberations on national issues.