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A new Constitutional Amendment Bill introduced in Sierra Leone seeks to significantly alter the requirements for winning the presidency, lowering the threshold needed to secure a first-round victory.
The 2025 Constitutional Amendment Bill proposes repealing the long-standing requirement that a presidential candidate must secure 55% of the national vote to be declared the winner outright. Instead, under the proposed Clause 42(2)(e), a candidate would be declared elected if they secure a simple majority of total valid votes nationally, combined with earning at least 20% of the valid votes in two-thirds of the country’s districts.
If no candidate meets these new criteria, a run-off election would be triggered between the top contenders.
Legal analysts and civil society groups, including the Institute for Legal Research and Advocacy for Justice (ILRAJ), have raised concerns regarding the proposed changes. Critics argue that dropping the threshold from 55% to a simple majority, coupled with a minimal district spread, risks weakening the democratic mandate of the presidency. There are fears that the new rule could allow a candidate with narrow overall support to win outright, or conversely, cause a candidate with the strongest national vote to lose due to the district distribution requirement.
The ILRAJ notes that the Bill deviates from the Tripartite Committee’s Recommendation 53. That recommendation had proposed a stricter standard of 50% plus one vote nationally, along with 25% of the vote in at least half of the districts for a first-round win.
“Democracy needs a president with both broad appeal and a robust mandate,” the ILRAJ stated in a review of the Bill. The organization warns that vague or uneven district performance under the new rules could lead to disputed election results, prolonged run-offs, and challenges to legitimacy in an already polarized political landscape.
The ILRAJ is recommending that the Bill be amended to align closer to the Tripartite recommendations. They propose requiring 50% plus one vote nationally and at least 25% in two-thirds of districts for a first-round victory. Furthermore, they suggest embedding population-weighted adjustments to prevent smaller districts from disproportionately blocking majority choices and are calling for broader stakeholder consultation to build consensus on the final thresholds.
He never made it!
It makes no difference which system is adopted. The last election was rigged and nothing happened. We are still left with the rigged elected president. Nothing matters in SL. The whole country is governed by lawless thugs.
Some people are there going sleepless nights brainstorming on how to manipulate processes that gives them undue advantage in our electoral systems. As a concerned citizen, my priority in the constitution remains with the scaling down of excessive powers from the executives, current levels of authority given to executive makes our governance system akin to a dictatorship, & far from promoting good governance.