Sierra Leone’s Supreme Court is set to rule on October 7 on a dispute over the Constitution of Sierra Leone (Amendment) Bill, 2025, after President Julius Maada Bio declined to sign the measure into law and instead referred key constitutional questions to the country’s highest court.

Parliament declared the bill passed on August 10, following a sitting in which opposition All People’s Congress (APC) lawmakers walked out before the final vote. The clause on the electoral commission passed 96-41, but no complete tally for the full amendment package has been made public, leaving open the question at the heart of the current dispute: whether the two-thirds majority required to alter the constitution must be calculated from all 149 members of Parliament, or only from those who were present and voting at the time.

The distinction matters because two-thirds of the full 149-seat Parliament is 100 votes. The ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party holds 81 seats, and with the support of the 14 non-partisan paramount chiefs who sit in the House, can count on 95 votes — five short of the threshold under a full-chamber calculation. The 96 votes recorded for the electoral commission clause would clear that bar only if the threshold is read as applying to members present and voting rather than the whole House.

President Bio, who faced a September 24 deadline to sign or reject the bill, opted instead to send the matter to the Supreme Court. Explaining the referral, Bio said the reform touches “the constitutional and democratic foundations of the Republic,” and that he wanted judicial clarity and broad public understanding of the amendment before giving his final assent. He has said he will announce his decision on signing only after the court delivers its opinion.

The government has defended the amendment package as, in its own description, a set of democratic reforms “designed to modernize the electoral system, broaden inclusion, reduce the cost and tension of presidential runoffs.” Among the changes, the bill would lower the threshold for winning the presidency outright from 55 percent to 50 percent of valid votes plus one, lock in proportional representation as the permanent system for parliamentary elections, require that at least 30 percent of candidates for national and local office be women, and allow dual-nationality Sierra Leoneans to run for Parliament.

The APC has separately challenged the Speaker’s ruling on the bill’s passage before the Supreme Court, questioning whether the constitutionally required threshold was actually met. The Institute for Governance Reform, a civil society organization, filed its own petition on September 4 raising similar procedural concerns, and a Freetown law firm has brought a related legal challenge. The Supreme Court has said it will hear all pending matters relating to the bill in a single sitting on October 7.

The outcome carries weight well beyond the immediate legal question. Commentators tracking Sierra Leone’s path to the 2028 general election have noted that electoral rules draw their legitimacy not just from formal passage but from public confidence that the process used to create them was lawful and transparent. With the presidential threshold, parliamentary representation system, and candidate eligibility rules all hanging on the court’s interpretation of Section 108 of the 1991 Constitution, Thursday’s ruling is likely to shape the ground rules for Sierra Leone’s next election cycle.

Sources: Ecofin Agency, Rio Times Online, The Sierra Leone Telegraph