By Saidu Bangura (Expo Intern).
Most Sierra Leoneans now know the basic story. Parliament is debating a new Constitutional Amendment Bill. The Attorney General calls it a move “from a constitution of survival to a constitution of prosperity.” Government has even started talking about a referendum, possibly held together with the 2028 election. That much is clear.
What is less clear — and more worrying — is how this process is being handled. And in matters this important, how something is done matters just as much as what is done.
Look at the timeline. Debate started on 28 July and ran past 1:56 in the morning. It was postponed to the 31st. Then postponed again. A recess that was meant to last thirty minutes stretched into six hours of closed-door talks between party leaders. Still, no agreement. Now lawmakers are set to meet again on 10 August to keep arguing over proportional representation, the presidential election threshold, and other major clauses. Even after Parliament votes, many of these clauses will still need to pass a national referendum. This does not look like a country calmly finishing twenty years of consultation. It looks like a process running out of time it set for itself.
This matters because of what the Bill claims to represent. Its roots are real. They go back to the 1999 Lomé Peace Agreement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the Justice Edmund Cowan Review Committee, which consulted over ten thousand citizens. That is a genuine foundation. But a process built over twenty years should not be rushed through in two weeks. If these reforms are truly meant to last for generations, they can survive a slower, more open process.
Two clauses are causing the most argument, and they deserve to be named clearly. The first would lower the bar for winning the presidency from 55% to a simple 50% plus one vote. The second would move the country from First-Past-the-Post voting toward proportional representation. Right now, First-Past-the-Post means every community elects its own MP — someone voters can find and hold accountable. Civil society groups, the Labour Congress, religious leaders, and traditional rulers all agree on this point: keep First-Past-the-Post. Moving away from it is not a small technical change. It shifts power away from local communities and toward political parties. People deserve to know who benefits from that shift.
This is also not happening in isolation. In the same weeks that Parliament has been locked in late-night debates, police blocked the Sierra Leone Bar Association from holding its own election. Lawyers were turned away at the venue, and no court order was ever shown to justify it. Whatever the internal reasons, the timing looks bad. The country is rewriting the rules that check government power, while the very institution meant to test those rules in court just had its own election shut down by police. That is hard to reconcile.
None of this means reform itself is wrong. Sierra Leone has needed constitutional change since Lomé, and a government that finally acts on that promise deserves some credit. But a constitution only holds real legitimacy when two things line up: good content, and a fair process. Right now, the process is shaky. Overnight sessions, unexplained delays, and a referendum date still being negotiated in public are not signs of a nation taking its time to get things right. They look more like a government racing against a clock of its own making.
If this Bill really is meant to last for generations, Parliament should be willing to slow down and prove it. Publish each disputed clause in plain language. Give citizens real weeks, not days, to respond. Separate the referendum date from the election calendar, so it cannot be seen as timed for political advantage. Without that, Sierra Leone risks ending up with a constitution that technically passes but never earns the one thing it truly needs to survive — the lasting trust of the people it is meant to serve.
Sierra Leoneans did not ask for a new constitution overnight. They asked for one built to outlast the government that wrote it. Parliament still has the chance to deliver that. But only if it resists the urge to mistake speed for progress.
Copyright –Published in Expo Times News on Wednesday, 12th August 2026 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)
