By Alpha Amadu Jalloh
Honourable Members of Parliament, members of the SLPP, members of the APC, Paramount Chief Members of Parliament, and those entrusted with interpreting and defending the Constitution of Sierra Leone, this is not a letter written merely to challenge your politics. It is written to challenge your conscience because one day every seat in that Parliament will be occupied by somebody else. The title “Honourable” will belong to another name, government vehicles will move without you, security personnel will salute somebody else, parliamentary allowances will stop, telephone calls from powerful people will become fewer, and doors that open because of your office will eventually close. As happens to every human being regardless of wealth, title, tribe, political party or power, life itself will end. What will remain are your name, your decisions and the consequences of what you did when Sierra Leone placed power in your hands.
That is why the present constitutional amendment controversy must be bigger than SLPP and APC, bigger than President Julius Maada Bio, bigger than the ambitions of politicians preparing themselves for the next election and bigger than the interests of those hoping to remain politically relevant. A constitution does not belong to the government of the day. It belongs to generations, including Sierra Leoneans who have not yet been born.
The 1991 Constitution itself gives Parliament legislative authority, but it also contains a warning that every parliamentarian should read repeatedly: Members of Parliament are to regard themselves as representatives of the people of Sierra Leone and desist from conduct through which they improperly enrich themselves or alienate themselves from the people. That constitutional principle should trouble the conscience of anyone tempted to believe that parliamentary arithmetic alone gives moral legitimacy to everything Parliament can accomplish.
The Constitution of Sierra Leone (Amendment) Bill, 2025 is no ordinary legislation. The issues under consideration touch the architecture of elections, representation and governance itself, and the process has generated profound political disagreement. These are precisely the circumstances in which restraint, transparency and national consensus become more important, not less.
To my brothers and sisters in the SLPP, you will not govern forever, and that is not an insult but the very meaning of democracy. Every power you create for yourselves today may tomorrow belong to your opponents. Every constitutional shortcut that appears convenient while you control the presidency can become frightening when another political party controls it. Therefore, never write constitutional rules according to who presently occupies State House. Write them according to what would still appear fair if your greatest political opponent occupied State House tomorrow morning. That is perhaps the simplest test of constitutional integrity.
To the APC Members of Parliament, particularly anyone considering breaking with the official position of the opposition on these controversial provisions, I ask something equally simple: examine your conscience. There have been allegations and rumours in public discourse about political inducements, deals and “selling out.” Rumour is not proof, and nobody should be declared corrupt merely because people disagree with his or her vote. But precisely because such suspicions exist, every MP has an obligation to demonstrate that his or her position comes from conviction, constitutional principle and the national interest.
If your conscience genuinely tells you that an amendment is good for Sierra Leone, defend it openly. Explain it to your constituents and look them in the eyes while telling them why. But if any person’s vote can be purchased by promises of money, appointments, protection, political advancement or future favour, then that person has sold something far more valuable than a parliamentary vote: the trust of people who may have very little except their vote. Money finishes, appointments expire and governments fall, but dishonour can outlive the person who earned it.
To our Paramount Chief Members of Parliament, I appeal with particular seriousness. Chieftaincy is older than the present political parties, and the Constitution guarantees and preserves the institution of chieftaincy. You therefore carry something deeper than ordinary partisan politics: the inheritance of communities, customs and generations. Indeed, the Constitutional Review Committee itself recommended a national House of Paramount Chiefs as an alternative mechanism for preserving a national traditional voice, while recommending that Paramount Chiefs no longer sit as Members of Parliament.
Whether one agrees with that recommendation or not, it raises a profound question: should traditional authority become decisive political muscle when the elected political class is divided over fundamental constitutional change? Chiefs must think carefully about the answer because today you may cast a vote welcomed by one government and tomorrow another government may demand the same loyalty. Eventually, chieftaincy itself risks becoming another battlefield between red and green.
A Paramount Chief should be capable of receiving an SLPP supporter and an APC supporter under the same roof without either believing that the Chief belongs politically to the other. Once traditional authority becomes deeply identified with partisan political calculations, something precious is endangered.
And to the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, history may yet bring questions arising from this constitutional process before you. When that moment comes, remember that constitutional courts exist most importantly when political power is strongest and controversy is greatest. Judicial independence means little when cases are easy. Its real value emerges when the government wants one answer, the opposition wants another, public passions are high, and the Constitution must nevertheless speak through law rather than fear, friendship or political convenience.
Judges, Chief Justices, Presidents, Speakers and Members of Parliament all eventually leave office, while even Paramount Chiefs pass into history. Only the Republic continues. This is why constitutional amendment must never become constitutional conquest.
Sierra Leone has paid too high a price for peace to treat its supreme law as another battlefield for temporary political victory. We buried people during a brutal civil war and established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because we learned, painfully, what happens when citizens lose confidence in institutions, justice and political inclusion. Constitutional wisdom therefore requires more than asking, “Do we have the numbers?” It requires asking whether we still have the trust of the people, because those are two entirely different questions.
You may have enough votes inside Parliament and still leave millions outside Parliament feeling unheard. You may satisfy parliamentary procedure and still deepen political distrust. You may win today’s division and create tomorrow’s crisis. Where constitutional provisions legally require the sovereign people to speak through referendum, let them speak. Where provisions do not legally require referendum but remain profoundly divisive, seek broader consensus rather than celebrating numerical superiority. Do not fear the people because they are Sierra Leone.
The farmer in Kabala, the trader in Dove Cot Market, the fisherman in Tombo, the teacher struggling on a salary that disappears before the month ends, the unemployed graduate, the poda-poda driver, the market woman and the young man wondering whether democracy has anything left to offer him are all Sierra Leone. These people do not have parliamentary offices, official vehicles or the ability to summon ministers, and many may never meet the President. Their sovereignty is exercised principally through the political and constitutional system. Never make them believe that even that belongs to somebody else.
Before any Honourable Member casts another consequential vote on these amendments, go home and sit somewhere quietly. Remove the party colour from your mind, forget SLPP and APC for a moment, forget State House, party leadership and promises of tomorrow, and imagine that your parliamentary career has already ended. Imagine yourself twenty years from now explaining this period to your grandchildren and one of them asking, “When Sierra Leone’s Constitution was being changed, what did you do?”
What will you tell that child? Will you say you defended what you genuinely believed was right, demanded consultation, stood against your own party when conscience required it and protected the Constitution even when doing so threatened your political career, or will you change the subject? That is the question before you. It is not merely how you vote, but how you will live afterwards with the memory of why you voted.
For those accused in the streets and political conversations of having been “bought,” prove the accusation wrong through transparency and principle. For those being pressured by political parties, remember that political parties cannot accompany anyone into eternity. For those intoxicated by power, remember the photographs of powerful men who once controlled entire nations and are today merely photographs in history books. Power is temporary, but conscience has a much longer memory.
Sierra Leone does not need constitutional winners and losers. It needs a constitutional settlement capable of surviving whichever party wins the next election. I therefore appeal to President Bio, the SLPP, the APC, independent-minded parliamentarians, Paramount Chief Members of Parliament, the Speaker, the Attorney-General and, should constitutional questions reach them, the Justices of the Supreme Court: do not leave behind a constitutional wound simply because you possess the institutional power to prevail today.
There is still time to choose restraint over triumphalism, consultation over confrontation, legitimacy over arithmetic and country over party. Your seats will one day be empty, your titles will disappear and your names will eventually be spoken in the past tense, but Sierra Leone will remain. Before you vote, rule, sign, certify or pronounce judgment on anything capable of shaping generations, ask yourself one final question: When I am no longer here to defend this decision, will the decision still be able to defend my name?
If the answer troubles your conscience tonight, perhaps your conscience is doing exactly what God gave it to you to do.
