By Albert David
The 2025 Constitutional Amendment Bill has been presented as a modernizing step, an effort to “professionalize” Sierra Leone’s Electoral Commission by raising academic requirements and setting age thresholds for commissioners. On the surface, these reforms appear progressive. They speak the language of institutional competence, meritocracy, and administrative rigor.
But beneath this polished veneer lies a troubling omission, one that strikes at the very heart of democratic legitimacy. The Bill elevates credentials while ignoring the single most essential qualification for any electoral referee: unquestionable political neutrality.
In its current form, the Amendment risks creating a commission that is academically impressive yet politically compromised. And in a democracy, that is not progress. It is regression disguised as reform.
The draft Bill allows for a scenario that should alarm any citizen who values free and fair elections:
A commissioner may hold a PhD, decades of experience, and an impeccable résumé, yet still be a senior figure in a political party. A former minister or MP may transition into an electoral oversight role the very next day, without any cooling‑off period. No explicit safeguards prevent partisan actors from influencing the very process that determines who governs the nation. This is not a theoretical risk. It is a structural vulnerability.
A system that prioritizes academic titles over political neutrality creates the perfect conditions for sophisticated manipulation, the kind that hides behind credentials, not coercion. It replaces crude interference with polished influence. It allows partisanship to enter the counting room wearing a suit, holding a doctorate, and claiming “professionalism.”
This is not democracy. It is the appearance of democracy. A partisan official with multiple degrees is far more dangerous to public trust than a neutral official with fewer credentials. Democracy does not collapse only through violence or blatant fraud. It also erodes quietly, through subtle biases, procedural tilts, and the silent shaping of outcomes by those who are meant to be impartial.
When electoral umpires are politically aligned, even unintentionally, every decision becomes suspicious and questionable. Which polling stations receive more resources? How disputes are resolved? How results are communicated?
Which irregularities are investigated, and which are ignored?
Neutrality is not a luxury. It is the oxygen of electoral legitimacy. Allowing politically active individuals to oversee elections is not just unwise. It is ethically troubling, democratically unsound, and institutionally corrosive. It creates conflicts of interest that no code of conduct can fully neutralize, public suspicion that undermines acceptance of results , opportunities for manipulation that are difficult to detect and even harder to prove and a culture of distrust that weakens national cohesion.
In a country where elections have historically been moments of tension, the credibility of the referee is not a procedural detail. It is a national security concern.
If Sierra Leone is serious about strengthening its democracy, then the path forward is clear and non-negotiable:
- A formal ban on appointing individuals with active or recent political party affiliations. No commissioner should be a party executive, strategist, financier, or mobilizer, past or present, without a meaningful period of disengagement.
- A mandatory cooling‑off period for former politicians. A transition from political actor to electoral referee must be separated by time, not convenience. This is standard practice in democracies that value integrity.
- Transparent, merit‑based selection processes.
Academic qualifications matter, but they must complement neutrality, not replace it.
- Public accountability mechanisms.
Citizens must be able to scrutinize the backgrounds, affiliations, and conduct of those entrusted with safeguarding their votes.
These reforms are not radical. They are democratic common sense. Sierra Leone stands at a crossroads. The nation can choose a path where elections are overseen by individuals whose loyalty is to the Constitution and the people, or by individuals whose loyalties are divided, conflicted, or politically motivated.
Professionalism without neutrality is a façade. Credentials without independence are camouflage and reform without integrity is deception.
If the goal is to protect the sanctity of the ballot, then the priority must be fairness, not formality, neutrality, not titles, independence, not influence.
The credibility of Sierra Leone’s elections, and the trust of its citizens, depends on it.
