Freetown, 29 July 2026
For most of Tuesday 28th July, the Well of Parliament was taken up by a single question: how should Sierra Leoneans choose the people who govern them?
The occasion was the second reading of the Constitution of Sierra Leone (Amendment) Bill, 2025, the most far-reaching attempt to rewrite parts of the 1991 Constitution in more than a decade. Attorney General and Minister of Justice Alpha Sesay piloted the Bill. Members from both sides of the House spoke, some at length. By late evening, with the Order Paper still full, the Speaker adjourned proceedings to Friday, 31 July 2026.
Nothing has been finally decided. But Tuesday gave the country its clearest look yet at where the battle lines fall.
The Attorney General’s case
Hon. Alpha Sesay built his argument around a single claim that nothing in this Bill was invented in his office.
Every provision, he told the House, can be traced to one of two sources. The first is the report of the Constitutional Review Committee chaired by the late Justice Edmond Cowan. The second is the body of more than 150 position papers submitted by citizens, lawyers, civil society groups and institutions during the review process, together with the report of the Tripartite Committee set up after the disputed 2023 elections.
He described the Bill as “not partisan but generational”, the product of a reform journey stretching back more than twenty years, and reminded members that a great many of the proposals gathered during the review had never been controversial at all.
On the criticism that the Bill leans heavily towards elections, his answer was practical. Electoral law cannot be changed on the eve of a poll. Commissions need time to train staff, redraw boundaries and educate voters. If these changes are to matter for 2028, they must be settled now rather than afterwards.
He also made a point that drew nods from across the aisle. Electoral reform, he said, is gender reform. Several of the amendments are designed specifically to widen the space for women in public life.
The Opposition’s position
Invited by the Speaker to respond, the Leader of the Opposition drew a careful line.
“We are not against amending the Constitution, only some portions of the Constitution,” he said.
That single sentence framed everything that followed. The disagreement on Tuesday was not about whether the 1991 Constitution needs work. It was about which parts, how fast, and on whose terms.
Who picks the referee?
The Bill would rename the Electoral Commission as the National Electoral Commission and create a Search and Nomination Committee, drawing members from religious bodies, the Bar, civil society, labour, the media, youth and women’s organisations, to recommend candidates for Chief Electoral Commissioner.
The Chairman of the Legislative Committee was unconvinced that the constitutional text is the problem. The real failure, he argued, has been the absence of honest consultation, not the wording of the Constitution. Fix the political culture, he said, rather than the clause.
Hon. Gevao made a similar point from the government benches, and added a historical one. Chief Electoral Commissioners appointed by past presidents have gone on to run elections that removed the very governments that appointed them. That record, he suggested, argues against panic about presidential appointment powers.
Hon. Daniel Koroma of the opposition wanted a narrower fix. If a President rejects every name a nominating body puts forward, the Constitution should require him to give reasons and should set out a clear route to a fresh list. Without that, he warned, discretion becomes a veto.
Hon. Zombo backed keeping the President’s role, provided consultation is genuine, and proposed that commissioners hold postgraduate qualifications.
There was also a smaller fight over age. The Bill would bar anyone over 65 from serving. The Chairman of the Legislative Committee pointed out that Nigeria and Namibia impose no such cap, and asked why Sierra Leone should shut out experienced people on a birthday.
The presidential threshold
This is the change most likely to touch every voter.
Today, a presidential candidate needs 55 per cent of valid votes to win outright in the first round. No candidate in Sierra Leone’s history has ever cleared that bar on the first attempt, which is why run offs have become routine.
Hon. Aminata Sesay disputed the Attorney General’s assertion that the proposed threshold simply reflects the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Tripartite Committee. In her view, the Bill departs in important respects from those recommendations and should not be presented as implementing them wholesale.
Other Speakers, including the Chairman of the Legislative Committee and Hon. Gevao, argued for the simpler standard of 50 per cent plus one. Their case: a candidate who wins more than half of all valid votes has already earned the country’s confidence, and forcing a second round adds cost, tension and risk. Hon. Gevao put it bluntly, noting that election violence in Sierra Leone tends to kill supporters rather than candidates, and that fewer contested rounds means fewer funerals.
The Bill as gazetted does not simply say “50 per cent plus one”. It pairs a simple majority of national votes with a geographic spread requirement, namely at least 20 per cent of valid votes in two thirds of districts. A candidate could therefore pass the national test and still fail the district test. How Parliament settles that second limb matters as much as the headline number.
Proportional representation
Nothing divided the House more sharply.
Defenders of the district block PR system argued that its critics are blaming the wrong thing. The Chairman of the Legislative Committee said an MP’s job is legislation, representation and oversight whatever route brought them to the Chamber, and that complaints about absent MPs are really complaints about weak parties, thin civic education and poor accountability.
Hon. Gevao added that PR has widened participation, particularly for women, and that the Constitution already contemplates its use.
The counter case came from two directions. Hon. Timbo reminded the House that PR was first adopted in 1996 because the war made constituency elections impossible, and used again in 2002 in the immediate aftermath of conflict. Its origin, he said, was emergency rather than design. He also noted that Paramount Chiefs and several position papers opposed keeping it, and that Ghana, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States all run constituency systems without collapsing.
Hon. Aminata Sesay of the opposition made the constituent’s argument. Under PR, she said, ordinary people still ask who their MP actually is, because there is no single name attached to their locality. She also pressed the government on why the census and boundary delimitation were not completed in time, if a return to constituency elections was ever really the plan.
Women in Parliament
Here the tone changed. Support for entrenching women’s representation in the Constitution, rather than leaving it to ordinary legislation that a future Parliament could quietly repeal, was close to unanimous.
Hon. Zombo put the principle plainly. Women are not asking for privileges, only equal opportunity, and constitutional protection is what stops today’s gains from becoming tomorrow’s casualties. She urged parties to alternate men and women on their lists, asked Parliament to confront the cost of running for office, which shuts many capable women out long before nomination day, and called for the Constitution’s language to be modernised so that “he” becomes “he or she”.
Hon. Aminata Sesay pushed back on one strand of the argument. Women in the current Parliament, she said, are there because they worked for it and earned their communities’ trust, not because a formula delivered them. The Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act already sets minimum thresholds. What is missing is political will, not another electoral system.
Who is allowed to stand
The Bill would open presidential elections to independent candidates who can show sufficient financial capacity and community support.
The Chairman of the Legislative Committee was wary. In a young democracy, he argued, weakening parties is not obviously progress, and vetting and holding an independent to account is harder than it looks. Critics outside Parliament have raised a different worry, that a wealth test could quietly turn the presidency into a rich person’s race.
On dual citizenship, he took the liberal position. Sierra Leoneans who hold another passport should not be automatically shut out of Parliament or public office, given the skills and capital many in the diaspora could bring home. Hon. Zombo agreed in principle but wanted a residency period first, so that returnees understand the country they propose to lead.
She also asked that serious drug offences be added to the list of convictions that disqualify a person from public office, and supported the provision allowing the Vice President to assume office immediately when the presidency falls vacant.
Hon. Aminata Sesay questioned whether the proposed eligibility framework for independent presidential candidates contains adequate safeguards. While supporting broader political inclusion in principle, she argued that the combination of independent candidacy and the Bill’s approach to citizenship could create unintended risks if persons with questionable backgrounds were able to satisfy the constitutional requirements. She urged Parliament to ensure that any expansion of eligibility is matched by robust safeguards protecting the integrity of public office.
The drafting errors MPs want fixed
Not every intervention was philosophical. Several were about text that simply does not work.
The most serious concerns election petitions. As drafted, a candidate would have three days from the declaration of results to file a challenge in the Supreme Court. The Chairman of the Legislative Committee suggested the intention was probably seven days, and observed that three days is not enough time to assemble a petition of that magnitude. The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone, in its position paper of 9 June 2026, went further and recommended fourteen days.
Members also flagged incorrect cross references to the Vice President, outdated citations to local government legislation, and unclear wording on resignation from and removal by political parties.
These are technical points. They are also the kind of technical points that end up in the Supreme Court five years from now.
Two speeches worth remembering
Hon. Timbo took the House back to Lancaster House in London, April and May 1960, when a Sierra Leonean delegation of government, opposition, chiefs and educators negotiated independence together. Future generations, he said, will remember the Sixth Parliament for what it does with this Bill in the same way the country still remembers the men and women who went to London.
He paid tribute to the late President Joseph Saidu Momoh for the 1991 Constitution’s introduction of multi party democracy, entrenched rights, the Electoral Commission, the Audit Service and presidential term limits. And he issued a challenge to the Opposition, members who insist Parliament must faithfully implement the Cowan Commission cannot then reject the Nomination Committee, which came from that same Commission.
Hon. Daniel Koroma offered the day’s most quotable appeal, urging colleagues to “agree to disagree” in the national interest, and to legislate for generations rather than for the next election cycle.
How this actually becomes law
Section 108 of the Constitution requires publication before Parliament can act. The Bill was signed by the Attorney General on 1 December 2025 and published in Gazette No. 103 of 24 December 2025.
The Bill was formally introduced early this year. By a notice dated 3 February 2026, Parliament invited position papers from citizens, lawyers, parties and civil society.
Yesterday was the Second reading and it will be followed by the committee stage. This is where the House now sits. Members debate the principle of the Bill and then examine it clause by clause.
Ordinary constitutional amendments need a two-thirds majority of all Members.
Certain protected provisions cannot be changed by Parliament alone. They require a national referendum, with two thirds of those voting in favour. Whether any part of this Bill touches an entrenched provision is itself a live dispute, and it is one that could end up before the courts.
Beyond the Chamber
Public argument has been intense.
The Institute for Legal Research and Advocacy for Justice welcomed the fixed election dates, gender quota and the principle of independent candidacy, while warning about executive capture, vague financial tests for independents and the short petition window.
The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone supported the Bill’s direction and recommended that Search Committee representatives be chosen by their own institutions rather than by the President, that the district threshold be reduced from 20 to 15 per cent, and that the filing of petitions be extended.
Former Attorney General Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara has urged MPs to vote by conscience and proposed referring the Bill to a joint committee with the Law Reform Commission for a thirty day public inquiry. The Lawyers’ Society of Sierra Leone has questioned the two-thirds of districts requirement and criticised what it sees as piecemeal reform.
Government has answered that the Bill flows from processes begun long before this administration, that consultation has been nationwide, and that there is no third term agenda in it.
What happens on Friday
Parliament resumes on 31 July 2026 to continue the second reading and move into detailed consideration of clauses.
Three questions are worth watching.
Will the drafting errors be corrected on the floor? The three day petition window is the clearest test of whether this House is scrutinising or simply processing.
Does the district spread requirement survive intact? It has attracted more expert criticism than almost anything else in the Bill, and it is not what most MPs described on Tuesday.
Can the government find two thirds? Constitutional amendment is one of the few things a Sierra Leonean government cannot do alone. Some measure of opposition support is arithmetic, not courtesy.
Both sides accepted on Tuesday that this Bill carries historic weight. Friday will show whether that shared recognition can produce a shared outcome.