As the 55th Legislature resumes today, the gavel in the hand of Speaker Richard Nagbe Koon has never felt so precarious. The chamber he presides over is not merely divided by policy but is fractured by a profound loss of confidence in his very moral authority to lead. The current campaign for his removal, fueled by shocking allegations of incest and fraud, is not an isolated revolt. It is the explosive culmination of a corrosive and controversial ascendancy that has left the House wounded since 2024.
Koon’s speakership was born not from unity, but from a legislative civil war. The October 2024 move to unseat then-Speaker Cllr. J. Fonati Koffa ignited a bitter conflict that saw Koon’s faction seize control through a contested election, slammed by opponents as fraudulent. What followed was a period of profound constitutional crisis: the hijacking of the budget process, the alleged brutalization of lawmakers, the installation of steel doors on the chamber, and the seizure of offices. It took a definitive ruling from the Supreme Court on April 23, 2025, to declare Koon’s initial authority unconstitutional, a staggering rebuke of his first grasp for power. While Koffa’s subsequent resignation paved the way for Koon’s official—and legally recognized—election, the scars never healed. The current low attendance and simmering anger are the legacy of that self-inflicted wound.
Now, the political knife-fighting of his rise has been eclipsed by a profoundly personal scandal. The detailed, public allegations from retired U.S. Army officer Cecelia Kpor—presenting him as a husband accused of bigamy and immigration fraud—have been met with a family counter-narrative so dramatic it has deepened the quagmire: they claim she is not his wife, but his biological sister, thus transmuting a scandal of infidelity into one of alleged incest. Official documents contradicting the family’s account have only poured fuel on the fire. In attempting to deflect one allegation, Koon’s camp has invoked another that is, in the public eye, even more morally disqualifying.
This is the untenable reality Speaker Koon now faces. The call from Representative J. Marvin Cole in the lawmakers’ chatroom cuts to the core of the dilemma: “You have committed crimes under our marital law… until we get reasons why you married your sister, I think you have lost legitimacy to preside as speaker. So it is just the right thing for you to recuse yourself.” The pressure is no longer just about poor leadership or financial malpractices—the original grievances of the 22 plotting lawmakers. It is about a fundamental crisis of legitimacy that makes every gavel strike sound hollow.
Koon’s decision to open the session at the historic Providence Baptist Church, an appeal to “foundational values” and “humility,” reads as a desperate performative contrast to the sordid drama engulfing him. It is an attempt to cloak a buckling political reality in the sacred linen of tradition. But lawmakers are not moved by symbolism; they are driven by survival and public perception. Sitting under the gavel of a man besieged by such grotesque allegations, they believe, taints them all.
Richard Nagbe Koon fought a brutal, institution-damaging war to win the speaker’s chair. He now faces a fiercer battle to keep it—not from an opposing bloc, but from the consequences of his own controversial history and the devastating personal accusations that have laid bare his vulnerable grip on power. To recuse himself is to admit the allegations have merit. To cling to the chair is to invite a boycott that paralyzes the people’s business. This is the poisoned fruit of a speakership born in conflict, now ripening into a full-blown constitutional and moral crisis. The house that Koon built is on the verge of expelling its own architect.
