Hon. Abdul Kargbo, Minority Leader in Parliament, has publicly stated that the recent amendment to the constitution was illegitimate because it did not meet the stipulated two-thirds threshold of the entire House.
Kargbo argued that the correct measure was two-thirds of all members of Parliament, not two-thirds of those who were in the chamber at the time of voting.
“The present Parliament has 149 members and two-thirds of 149 is 99.33. “Only 100 members of Parliament can amend the Constitution,” he said, stressing that only a minimum of 100 MPs have the mandate to change the nation’s supreme law. Kargbo submitted that at the sitting in question there were only ninety-six members present and that this number did not constitute the quorum required to amend the Constitution.
Hon. Kargbo went further to accuse the Speaker of criminality for allowing the bill to pass without the two-thirds threshold. “The Speaker committed a crime when he passed the bill without the two-thirds threshold,” he said. “You can’t change the Constitution by a ruling. You cannot change the Constitution by a simple majority at any given time.
Parliament violated the Constitution. What they did is an abuse of the Constitution.” He said and added, “Anyone who tampers with the Constitution without the two-thirds majority has committed a treasonous crime.”
The legal basis for the bill, Kargbo says, is Section 108(2)(b) of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone, which dictates that a bill to amend the constitution must be supported by not less than two-thirds of all the Members of Parliament at both the second and third readings, rather than two thirds of those present on any particular day.****
