Sierra Leone’s Dilemma: NEW in Court, a Constitution in Dispute, and 2028 on the Horizon
In 2002, shortly after Sierra Leone emerged from a devastating civil war and began the difficult work of rebuilding its democracy, 494 registered civil society organizations formed the National Election Watch (NEW). Its mission was both ambitious and essential: to monitor, evaluate, and support electoral processes nationwide, thereby strengthening public confidence in elections and, ultimately, the democracy those elections were meant to sustain.
More than two decades later, NEW has become one of the most recognizable guardians of Sierra Leone’s electoral process. During election periods, households across the country wait to hear assessments from its observers and leaders, including Marcella Samba-Sesay, and to hear the familiar “Mama en Papa” signature tune associated with its public messaging. Over the years, NEW’s willingness to speak forthrightly, together with the breadth of its nationwide membership and observer network, has helped establish it as one of Sierra Leone’s most consequential civil society institutions for electoral accountability.
That reputation makes its present predicament especially alarming.
In April, NEW held elections to select new leadership and subsequently announced the officials expected to take over the organization. However, the process became the subject of an internal dispute. An aggrieved party sought judicial intervention, and the matter ultimately led to an injunction that restricted the organization from carrying out its traditional functions.
The silence that has followed is more than an internal organizational problem. Its consequences could reverberate across Sierra Leone’s democratic landscape.
The country is still grappling with the political and institutional fallout from the disputed 2023 elections. Questions about transparency, public confidence, electoral administration, and the credibility of the announced results have not simply disappeared with time. If anything, they have made serious reflection more urgent. Sierra Leone must examine what went wrong, identify the institutional weaknesses exposed by that election, and recommit itself to a process in which citizens across political divides can have confidence.
At precisely such a moment, one of the country’s most important independent electoral watchdogs is fighting for its institutional survival.
Preparations for the 2028 elections will not begin in 2028. Credible elections are built years in advance. They depend on voter education, legal reform, oversight of electoral institutions, scrutiny of voter registration, engagement with political parties, monitoring of campaign conditions, assessment of electoral technologies and procedures, and sustained civic participation. An organization such as NEW cannot simply reappear a few months before polling day and be expected to perform these functions effectively.
Its work should already be gathering momentum.
But NEW’s paralysis is not the only cloud hanging over Sierra Leone’s democratic future.
In August 2026, Parliament approved the Constitution of Sierra Leone (Amendment) Bill, 2025, which contains sweeping changes to the country’s electoral architecture.
The government presents these changes as democratic reforms designed to modernize the electoral system, broaden inclusion, reduce the cost and tension of presidential runoffs, and address weaknesses identified in earlier constitutional and electoral reviews.
The opposition, however, has challenged both key provisions of the amendment and the process by which it advanced.
That disagreement is not merely procedural trivia. It raises a fundamental democratic question: how should the rules governing political power be changed?
The dispute has since moved beyond Parliament. The APC has taken the matter to the Supreme Court, challenging the Speaker’s interpretation and the procedure used in passing the amendment. A separate legal intervention from a Freetown law firm has similarly questioned whether the constitutionally required threshold was met. The president is also seeking clarification from the Supreme Court.
Whatever the eventual judicial interpretation, the political implications are serious. Electoral rules derive much of their legitimacy not merely from formal enactment, but from broad confidence that the process used to create them was lawful, transparent, and sufficiently inclusive. When the rules of the next election are themselves disputed before that election has even begun, another layer of mistrust is added to an already fragile democratic environment.
The question becomes even more urgent when placed alongside the crisis engulfing NEW.
If NEW remains immobilized for a prolonged period, Sierra Leone risks entering the next electoral cycle without one of its most experienced independent monitoring institutions operating at full strength. At the same time, the constitutional framework governing that election is itself the subject of political and legal contestation.
The combination is potentially combustible: disputed electoral rules, weakened independent monitoring, unresolved distrust from the 2023 election, and legal difficulties confronting major political actors.
The situation becomes still more troubling when considered alongside developments within the country’s main opposition. With a major opposition party facing legal and internal challenges of its own, the country’s leading election-monitoring coalition restrained by judicial action, and major changes to the electoral system contested before the courts, concerns about the broader democratic environment are inevitable.
None of these developments, individually or collectively, proves a coordinated attempt to manipulate the 2028 elections. Such a conclusion would require evidence, and suspicion should never replace fact.
But democracies are sustained not only by the technical legality of individual actions. They also depend on institutional credibility, political restraint, transparency, and citizens’ confidence that the rules are not being rearranged for partisan advantage.
When an opposition party is engaged in legal battles, an independent election watchdog is prevented from functioning, and the constitutional rules governing the next election are themselves the subject of litigation, citizens are entitled to ask difficult questions.
The danger is not merely that one institution may fail. It is that several pillars of electoral credibility may be weakened simultaneously.
That is why the crisis within NEW must be resolved transparently, lawfully, and urgently. It is also why the constitutional-amendment dispute requires authoritative resolution well before the country enters the final stages of the 2028 electoral cycle. Leaving either matter unresolved would invite precisely the mistrust Sierra Leone should be working to overcome.
The courts must, of course, be allowed to fulfill their constitutional role without political pressure. Equally, all political and institutional actors should recognize that something larger than individual victories is at stake.
NEW is not merely another civil society organization fighting over internal offices. Over more than two decades, Sierra Leoneans have placed their confidence in it as an institution of electoral accountability. Its credibility is therefore a national democratic asset.
The Constitution is likewise more than a collection of legal provisions. It is the compact that sets the rules for acquiring, exercising, and transferring political power. Changes to those rules must therefore inspire confidence not only among those who support the government of the day but also among citizens who may strongly oppose it.
Sierra Leone cannot afford to approach 2028 carrying unresolved wounds from 2023 while simultaneously entering the election with a weakened observer institution and a contested constitutional framework.
A credible election requires more than ballots, polling stations, and official declarations. It requires electoral rules that citizens broadly recognize as legitimate, institutions that can apply those rules impartially, and independent organizations that can observe the process, speak without fear, identify irregularities, and reassure citizens when procedures are properly followed.
For more than twenty years, NEW has attempted to provide part of that democratic safeguard.
The constitutional reform process now presents another test.
How Sierra Leone resolves both questions—the fate of its most prominent domestic election-monitoring coalition and the legitimacy of the rules under which the next election will be conducted—may determine whether 2028 begins as an opportunity to restore democratic confidence or as another election burdened by suspicion before the first ballot is cast.