Sierra Leone's parliamentary fault lines

President Maada Bio wants to organise a census without popular backing or key stakeholder support, and opposition parties are coalescing around this issue ahead of the 2023 elections. Meanwhile, the strife between the executive and legislature will impair governance – particularly for the business of reform. 

Main Findings – A flawed setup

There were fistfights at a parliamentary sitting on 19 April as Attorney-General Anthony Brewah tried to present a census order. President Bio (Sierra Leone People’s Party, SLPP) had called the emergency meeting, but opposition MPs said they weren’t formally notified and tried to stop the event on grounds that the parliament’s standing orders had been breached.

Opposition parties have been suspicious since 2020 when Bio first announced that a new census would be organised. They note that the last one was held only five years ago and censuses in Sierra Leone are usually held every 10 years. There are concerns that population numbers would be inflated in ruling SLPP strongholds to give the incumbent an electoral advantage in 2023 elections.

But these concerns are not new. In 2015, when he was in opposition, Bio also accused the then-ruling All People’s Congress (APC) of plotting to rig upcoming polls using the census. And indeed, civil society reports (including from the Carter Center) say that 2015 census officials were hired based on partisan interests, that population figures were rigged in APC strongholds and that the national statistics agency organised its processes in a way that ultimately benefitted the then-ruling party. 

Today’s proposed census has been postponed twice as the statistics agency struggled to mobilise resources for the activity and APC MPs are displeased because the Bio administration wanted to press on without parliamentary approval. It is yet another fault line in a relationship between parliament and the executive that has been strained from the outset.

In 2018, the SLPP won the presidency, but the APC won parliament and was poised to determine the next speaker. However, a high court blocked 16 APC MPs-elect from being sworn in because they failed to resign from public office before running for parliament. APC MPs saw that they would lose their majority and tried to disrupt the parliament’s first sitting. In the end, they all left the chamber or were evicted by police on that day, and the SLPP’s Abass Bundu was voted speaker in their absence. Nine of those 16 MPs were replaced in parliament by SLPP candidates four months later, and a violent by-election for another seat was declared inconclusive while APC was in the lead. The remaining six seats are still unfilled. SLPP is now the majority party.

This year, APC and other parties have been developing an alliance based on common grounds such as their opposition to this proposed census. A coalition named the Consortium of Political Parties has now been formed ahead of the 2023 elections.

Outlook – More political strife, weaker governance

The SLPP government is emboldened by the 2015 precedent and is capable of organising this census even without key stakeholder backing. Such a census will again be deeply skewed in favour of the ruling party without an inclusive process.

In any case, an opposition alliance is viable before 2023. There is sufficient time for the opposition leaders to combine support from constituents, and so far, they have significantly drawn from popular discontent around the economy and political rights. Even so, potential disagreements around fielding a consensus candidate could be in the way.

Meanwhile, the ongoing political wrangling will have governance costs. Legislation of political significance will be prioritised over more economically significant ones. For example, plans for a new cybercrime law seem to be accelerating ahead of critical mining law changes. This strife rooted in parliament’s flawed setup will undermine the processes by which the executive and legislature work together. A political risk is that this could create policymaking loopholes that could be revisited should power change hands in future.   

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*Photo credit: Freetown. Unsplash, Random Institute

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