=EDITORIAL= Legal-Minded Speaker, or Not: The Great Debate! The hottest issue now on the lips of many Sierra Leoneans is the one about whether the Speaker of Parliament ought to have a legal background or not! In the first place, it is a fact that the job of the Speaker of Parliament is not only tedious but demands intellect to a very high degree. Whilst there is one school of thought which believes that the Speaker of Parliament need not have a legal background, there is the other side which argues that any Speaker of Parliament must come from a legal background because the job is of such nature that it cannot be performed by just anybody! If we are to look at both arguments, we want to believe that not all legally-minded people who are appointed to positions of trust are good performers. We also are of the opinion that there are a good number of people without legal knowledge who were appointed to sensitive positions in and outside of government circles that performed excellently to the envy of legal-minded persons. What is important is not whether the Speaker of Parliament should come from the legal profession. Rather, that the Speaker of Parliament should have unquestionable integrity and must be a person who is transparent, honest, loyal and independent because at the end of the day, the Speaker is expected to have ultimate control over the rest of his colleagues in Parliament. At the same time, we at THE TRUMPET newspaper are further of the opinion that man is not made for the law; rather laws are made for men. Therefore, if the law states that the Speaker of Parliament must be legally-minded, then who can dispute that? On the other hand, where the law does not restrict persons without legal background to assume the position of Speaker of Parliament, then so be it. It should further be noted that the history of Speakers of Parliament in Sierra Leone has more than less been awarded or restricted to men. As far as we can recall, there has been only a couple of women who assumed the position of acting Speaker and Deputy Speaker of Parliament respectively. We can also recall that there was one gentleman who was not legally-minded but was appointed to the position of Speaker of Parliament. This gentleman’s tenure in office was riddled with the passing of bad laws simply because he was not legally-minded to differentiate good laws from bad laws! But now that the debate is on, we believe that at the end of the day, common sense should prevail patty party politics and ego. At the end of the day we want to see sanity prevail over petticoat politics for the good of the whole nation. We are of the view that at the end of this great debate, Sierra Leoneans should be the winners and not the losers to a few die-hard politicians who might want to scuttle the whole process for their personal political party politics! The die is cast!
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 21:23:19 +0000
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