The Executive Director of LEGAL LINK, Rashid Dumbuya Esq, said that legal link and other related institutions had not been consulted in the entireprocess leading to the amendment of sections Vof the Local Government Act of 2004.
It should be noted that only section V of the said Act was amended to extend the tenure of Mayors, Councillors and Chairpersons to five years. The amended section is awaiting Presidential assent from President Julius Maada Bio for it to take full effect.
He added that the amended section would have retrospective effect, explainingthatif an enactment expressly provides that it should be deemed to have come into effect from a past date, it is retrospective in nature.
“It then operates to affect existing rights and obligations, and is construed to take away, impair or curtail a vested right which had been acquired under some existing law.”
Lawyer Dumbuya noted Legal Link is concernedabout the manner in which the consultation was done. He claimed that the consultative process was not well-organized because institutions that focused their work on legal matters had not been consulted during the process.
He alluded that the conduct of local council, presidential and parliamentary elections simultaneously would save time, cost and reduce security threats, but doubted whether the National Electoral Commission and International Organization had been consulted in the process. He said that in the previous year the Electoral Commission launched its Electoral Calendar which indicated clearly that local council elections should be held in 2022.
The Consultant for the Decentralization Policy, Floyd Alex Davies said prior to the amendment , consultations had been done in 2019 and 2020 across the country, adding that afterwards results showed that over 90 percent of the population supported for the local council elections to be conducted simultaneously with legislative elections.
He added that the whole policy should have been amended other than the part Vbut because of its efficacy theMinistry of Local Government only amended the said section.
Davies emphasized that during the consultative process local experts like local council, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and all stakeholders had been involved during the consultation process across the districts.
He claimed that after the consultation process, a validation session was held in districts headquarters to ensure that the views of people were fully represented in the policy.
Davies averred that most institutions and people would choose not to involve themselves during consultations but after policy would have been drafted raise concerns.
By George M.O. Williams