- vows Mohamed Kamarainba
October 2, 2015 By Patrick Jaiah Kamara
Chairman and Leader of the Alliance Democratic Party (ADP), Mohamed Kamarainba Mansaray, has vowed to go ahead with a peaceful protest in Freetown planned for next Monday, 5 October.
Mr. Mansaray said his party disagrees with the recent verdict of the Supreme Court which endorsed that President Ernest Bai Koroma acted in accordance with the constitution to sack and replace Alhaji Samuel Sam-Sumana as Vice President.
The ruling has been criticised in several legal and academic circles, including those who played a key role in reviewing the 1978 Constitution and the passage of the 1991 Constitution.
The opposition leader joined millions of Sierra Leoneans who have laughed at the judgment as a judicial travesty of justice. He said the ruling of the apex court set a bad precedence and has the tendency to make the president autocratic.
“The ruling of the court has given small group like a political party to overturn the will of six million Sierra Leoneans; that is a constitutional abuse,” Mansaray said in a release just after the court ruled in favour of the president.
He noted that it was their democratic and constitutional right to stage a peaceful protest on what the general public thinks is unconstitutional, as the drafters of the 1991 Constitution were clever enough to have separated politicians that belong to political parties whilst in governance.
He said unlike the parliamentarians that should remain in their parties as stipulated by section 77(k) of the 1991 Constitution, the President and Vice President serve the country and not political parties after elections.
“The Supreme Court has murdered our constitution. When you sleep with democracy, you wake up with dictatorship. Our protest will send a message to the world that our democracy is at stake and our judiciary is no longer independent,” he stressed.
Mansaray has asked for a police clearance in a letter dated 29 September and addressed to the Inspector General of Police, Francis Munu.
But it remains highly unlikely whether permission will be granted to him and thousands who are aghast at the Supreme Court ruling to demonstrate peacefully in Freetown.