A message to the Chief Justice of Sierra Leone
By Ibrahim Tommy
As the Government and people of Sierra Leone continue to grapple with the country’s development challenges, I want to make a point about how judicial independence can be enhanced by judicial accountability. The fact that the Sierra Leone judiciary faces huge challenges is obvious even to the most passive observer. These challenges need to be fixed, and it requires a sense of urgency and political will that currently do not seem to exist. Addressing these challenges would require scaling up funding to such an important arm of government, but more importantly, ensuring that its statutory independence is fully protected and respected.
Judicial independence also requires that judges should not be subject to improper influence from the other branches of government or partisan interests. It also requires that an enabling environment is provided which ideally allows judges to decide cases and make rulings based on law and judicial discretion, regardless of whether decisions are politically unpopular or opposed by powerful interests.
At the moment, a good majority of Sierra Leoneans that I speak to do not believe that the judiciary is completely independent of undue private or partisan interests. This is regrettable, and does not bode well for Sierra Leone’s medium and long term peace consolidation and development aspirations. While judges are expected to negotiate salaries or conditions of service, judicial justice is a non-negotiable, priceless service. And those who are statutorily required to dispense it should be allowed to do so without man-made, binding constraints. Indeed, such constraints could unduly affect the course of justice. As Dato Param Cumaraswamy, Former UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers said, “The worst form of injustice in any civilized society is injustice perpetrated through the judicial process”.
Judicial independence, with all its innumerable benefits, ought to be tempered with some institutional checks to ensure that judicial officers are ultimately accountable to the public. Judicial accountability is broad in scope, and ranges from establishing a credible mode of recruitment, promotions, and security of tenure for judges to maintaining an effective case management system. Additionally, even though members of the bench are not required to provide an explanation to the public for the judgments or rulings they deliver, there needs to be an effective system that supervises particularly junior members of the bench. There are some institutional structures aimed at fostering judicial accountability in Sierra Leone, but enforcement is very weak.
The Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL) receives regular complaints from individuals who claim to have suffered a great deal of injustice in the criminal justice system, the Local Courts, among others. The complaints relate to delays in proceedings, blatant discriminatory conduct by Local Court officials, uneven application of discretion in the adjudication of bail applications by judges, including by imposing onerous bail conditions, and lack of public access to court documents.
Without providing details, each complaint CARL has received seems very serious, and in many ways contributes to the negative public perception of the judiciary. The judiciary, particularly the Honourable Chief Justice, has a huge task of ensuring some concrete steps are taken to help reverse the negative public perception of the judiciary. In particular, there is need for a more effective supervision of Magistrates and Judges with respect of a sacked police officer facing manslaughter charges, while at the same time refusing (three consecutive times) to release on bail a sitting Member of Parliament (MP) facing arson charges. It tells you there is urgent need for some measure of consistency. And, when a Magistrate orders the detention of a person facing criminal libel charges and the decision is overturned right away by those at the top for incomprehensible reasons, while at the same time allowing journalists (the latest being Jonathan Leigh) to be detained for similar charges, it certainly speaks volumes about the degree of mistrust that exists among the public insofar as the judiciary is concerned.
When a senior official in the judiciary tells a group of journalists that their colleagues should “go down” so that he will start writing good stories when “he comes out”, it tells you that accused persons seem to be pre-judged even by people who hold responsible positions well before trial actually commences. There are instances of Magistrates/Judges imposing exceptionally onerous bail conditions which deprived accused persons their right to bail. CARL has been reliably informed that the passport of Dr. Abass Bundu (a senior member of the opposition SLPP) was seized nearly two years ago, thus preventing him from travelling abroad. Meanwhile, the prosecution has not presented a single witness in his case. Meanwhile, the prosecution has not presented a single witness, and the court has still not discharged the matter. This is not helpful for our justice and rule of law credentials.
Our judicial officers require a more effective supervision. Whoever is reviewing bail conditions or fines should be sure that the rights of all accused are respected. How much guidance are the young members of the bench receiving? How do even senior members of the bench resist attempts by politicians and private persons to unduly influence their decisions?
This leads me to another significant pillar of judicial accountability – training for members of the bench. The judiciary is one of the least funded government departments in Sierra Leone. In 2013, it received less than 1% of the annual national budget. The security sector alone received about 16% of the budget for the same year. This obviously makes mockery of the conventional wisdom that security and justice are interrelated.
Limited funding to the judiciary undermines access to justice and hampers the ability of the judiciary to sponsor training sessions for members of the bench. While judicial independence is a critical pillar of democracy, the courts have a responsibility to protect it by discharging their functions with the highest degree of professionalism and knowledge. One of the ways to ensure this is to expose them to regular training sessions. The leadership of the judiciary needs to make training for judicial officers a priority going forward. There is also need to continue working on improving the salaries, terms and conditions of service of members of the bench.
Judicial accountability and independence reinforce each other in the sense that if the statutorily guaranteed independence of the judiciary is not handled responsibly, it could prompt appeals from the public for such wide latitude of independence and discretion to be subjected to external checks or control. And that could be dangerous. The judiciary can and must fix its own problems, and the Chief Justice can rely on the good will of many Sierra Leoneans to give her the required support. We can’t afford to continue ignoring these monumental problems. This is the time to do it!
Ibrahim Tommy is the Executive Director of the Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL). The article is culled from THE MONITOR, a monthly newsletter published by CARL.
