In an action that has come as a shock to anticorruption advocates and legal luminaries in support of democratic governance, the rule of law and respect for our constitutional institutions, the president of the Republic has in effect sacked the suspended Auditors General of the Audit Service Sierra Leone, the Auditor General of Sierra Leone and her deputy, Lara Taylor-Pearce and Tamba Momoh, which action has been called “an act of injustice and a travesty of procedural law”.
After receiving the much awaited tribunal report on the investigation into the suspended supreme auditors of Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) on Wednesday, June 12, 2024, the president despite repeated calls and demands from the lawyers representing the suspended auditors and the general public, has to date failed to release the report to the suspended auditors or make it public.
Even at the press conference held to make the president’s decision known to the public, the tribunal’s report was still not made public to the media and those interested in getting their hands on the report not limited to the Budget Advocacy Network (BAN) and lawyer Roland S. V. Wright representing Lara Taylor-Pearce. It must be noted that BAN refused to attend the press conference on the president’s decision on the tribunal report citing the absence of the report which forms the basis for the press conference.
Lara and Tamba were suspended in November 2021 for gross insubordination, professional misconduct and breach of confidentiality for not seeking explicit permission from the Office of the President before seeking receipts from hotels in South Africa, Lebanon and The Gambia to substantiate claims made by auditees from the president and first lady’s offices as the auditors were doing their audits of said public institutions on behalf of the Parliament of Sierra Leone aimed at showing how public money was spent by those entrusted with said money.
The president’s action to instruct the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and the Board of the Audit Service to initiate the necessary procedure and pursue actions for the removal of the auditors has been called a travesty of justice and the rules and procedures of the law.
The issue with the tribunal and the report hinges on the president’s failure to abide by the rules and procedures established in the removal of the suspended auditors general and the setting up of the tribunal. The way the president went about it also has an impact on how sitting judges are to be removed from office.
Despite its legality brought under question, the tribunal went ahead with its investigation and produced a report.
According to legal luminary Roland Wright, the procedure to be followed was for the tribunal to be set up with its make up or composition and terms of references established before the auditors were suspended. Trying to set this right and in the interest of the rule of law, lawyer Wright filed several applications to the former and present Chief Justices of the Supreme Court for their case to be assigned for the court to give a legal opinion on the establishment of the tribunal to investigate the ASSL auditors. Those submissions were in effect ignored as the law firm of Roland Wright was never replied and the case never assigned.
Despite the Supreme Court never having the opportunity to address the legitimacy of the tribunal, the report was generated and submitted to the president. Without waiting for the House of Parliament to vote on the issue, the president has made his pronouncement to have the two auditors officially relieved of their duties.
The issue of abuse of the rule and procedure of the law has been the bane of our governance narrative as duty bearers have routinely flouted the established rules, procedures and protocols on how to do things and have instead appropriated such authority and make orders from above that are in contrast to the rule, spirit and intent of the law.
It must be noted that before the report was to be handed over to Parliament to vote on whether Lara and Tamba are to be finally sacked, lawyer Wright wrote a passionate letter to the Speaker listing all extant legal arrogations that had taken place thereby bringing the name and integrity of the tribunal in disrepute.
In his letter to the Speaker, Wright had written: “In the name of constitutional and procedural correctness and for the sake of posterity, particularly as it is most undesirable for our revered Parliament to be asked to vote upon a report published and or produced by a tribunal whose constitutional validity is yet to be determined by the Supreme Court. Our Honourable Members of Parliament ought not to be seen participating in an exercise in which questions can later be raised as to the validity or otherwise of such an exercise.” He “urge Mr Speaker to seriously consider requesting an opinion from the Supreme Court of the Republic of Sierra Leone on the constitutional issues raised above before requesting our Honourable Members of Parliament to vote so as to avoid setting a bad constitutional precedent for the future, particularly as these issues also touch and concern the constitutionally ‘entrenched’ procedures for the removal of Judges from office.”
With the public still not knowing whether the House had a chance to vote and what the tribunal’s report entails the president has taken an action that once again questions his commitment to the rule and procedures of the law.
