AWE Media Sierra Leone

By: Francis Sowa A bill entitled ‘The Public Order (Amendment) Act, 2019’ has been gazetted. It seeks to “amend the Public Order Act, 1965 (Act No. 46 of 1965) by repealing Part V which deals with defamatory and seditious libel and to provide for other related matters.’ This followed Cabinet’s approval to repeal same. The next destination in the repeal process is Parliament. A bit of history: The Public Order Bill was introduced in Parliament in 1965 by Sir Albert Margai, the second Prime Minister of Sierra Leone. He apparently influenced parliament to enact a law that would serve as a sledge hammer to silent his critics and members of the opposition. Parliament, nonetheless, enacted the Bill despite the serious opposition (Kamara, J, 2007). The 1965 Public Order Act (a substantial extraction from the U.K Libel Act 1843 when it existed) is widely considered to be draconian and out of tune with the tenets of fundamental human rights. The fact that journal...