Why Sierra Leone Should Retain the First Past the Post (FPTP) Constituency System

As Sierra Leone debates constitutional reform, one proposal deserves particularly careful consideration: whether the country should replace the First Past the Post (FPTP) constituency system with proportional representation (PR) for parliamentary elections.

This debate should not be reduced to a contest between the APC and SLPP, or to calculations about which party might benefit at the next election. Constitutional rules should be designed to endure changes of government and shifts in the political landscape. The fundamental question is therefore which electoral system is most likely to strengthen Sierra Leone’s democracy over the long term.

There are legitimate arguments in favour of proportional representation. Most importantly, PR can produce a legislature that more accurately reflects the share of votes received by different parties and, if appropriately designed, can facilitate greater representation of women and other under-represented groups. Yet electoral systems do more than translate votes into seats. They also shape the relationship between citizens, political parties and their representatives.

For Sierra Leone, this is where the case for retaining constituency-based FPTP is strongest.

The importance of local accountability

Under the constituency system, citizens know who represents them. Every MP is elected from a defined geographical area and can therefore be held responsible by a specific community.

This creates a direct chain of accountability. Citizens know who to approach when roads remain impassable, schools are unfinished or public services are inadequate. They also know who they can remove at the next election if they believe that their interests have not been effectively represented.

This connection is especially important in a political system in which MPs are expected not simply to legislate in Freetown but also to advocate for their communities and maintain a visible presence within them.

Closed-list PR alters this relationship. Voters primarily choose between parties, while parties exercise considerable influence over which individuals enter Parliament and their position on electoral lists. This can shift accountability away from voters and towards party leaders. Where internal party democracy is weak, that risks further concentrating power in the hands of political elites.

The question is therefore not simply whether PR produces a mathematically more proportional outcome. It is also whether citizens retain meaningful control over who represents them.

Lessons from Sierra Leone’s recent elections

Sierra Leone’s own experience provides good reason to take this concern seriously.

Following the 2018 general elections, Parliament included representatives from the APC, SLPP, Coalition for Change (C4C) and National Grand Coalition (NGC), alongside independent MPs and Paramount Chief Members. The result reflected considerable variation in political competition across the country.

The 2023 parliamentary elections were instead conducted using district block proportional representation. The resulting Parliament was dominated by the country’s two largest political parties.

Electoral systems were not the only reason for this outcome, and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise. But the contrast raises an important question about whether constituency elections can create greater opportunities for candidates with strong local support who lack the national organisational machinery of the largest parties.

This is particularly relevant to independent candidates. Under FPTP, a popular local figure can potentially win a constituency without belonging to a major party. A party-list system makes political success much more dependent on party organisation and, depending on how lists are constructed, the decisions of party leaders.

Representation is more than proportionality

The strongest argument for PR is that the distribution of parliamentary seats can more closely reflect the distribution of votes. That is an important democratic principle, but it is not the only one.

Representation is also geographical. Sierra Leone’s communities face very different challenges. Fishing communities have different priorities from mining areas; rapidly growing urban constituencies face different pressures from agricultural communities.

Constituency MPs provide these communities with an identifiable voice in national politics. They also create a mechanism through which local concerns can travel upwards into Parliament.

The danger of moving towards closed party lists is therefore that representation becomes more strongly organised around political parties and less strongly around communities.

Protecting women’s representation

One of the strongest arguments associated with PR concerns the representation of women. Sierra Leone has made important progress in increasing women’s political participation, and constitutional reform should protect and extend those gains.

But this does not mean that constituency representation needs to be abandoned. Indeed, the operation of the current system has itself raised questions about how gains in women’s representation are protected.

Following the death of a female MP from Kenema, for example, her seat was filled by the next eligible candidate on her party’s list, who was a man. This demonstrates that simply adopting a list system does not automatically guarantee that gains in women’s representation will be sustained throughout a parliamentary term.

The better approach would be to consider targeted constitutional and legislative mechanisms to promote women’s representation while retaining direct constituency accountability. The objective should be to secure both inclusion and accountability rather than assuming that Sierra Leone must choose between them.

Electoral transparency and public confidence

There is another important advantage to constituency elections: they create multiple centres of electoral scrutiny.

Under FPTP, parliamentary candidates have a powerful incentive to monitor polling stations and scrutinise results within their constituency. Results can be counted and checked locally, and candidates and their agents can compare polling-station returns against constituency totals.

District-level PR does not eliminate these possibilities, but it changes the structure of competition. Because seats depend on aggregate party performance across a larger geographical area, greater importance is placed on the aggregation of results and the formula through which votes are converted into seats.

This matters particularly in Sierra Leone following the controversy surrounding the 2023 elections. Whatever one’s interpretation of that election, the dispute demonstrated the importance of electoral transparency and the damage that can be done when political actors and citizens lack confidence in announced results.

Future reforms should therefore maximise opportunities for parties, candidates, observers and citizens to independently verify the electoral process. Elections should not merely produce winners. Citizens need to be able to understand and trust how those winners were determined.

Strengthen institutions, not parties

None of this means that returning to FPTP will resolve Sierra Leone’s democratic challenges. Electoral systems cannot substitute for strong institutions.

The country also needs an independent and credible electoral commission, effective judicial oversight, transparent electoral procedures and political parties that respect democratic rules. Experiences elsewhere in Africa demonstrate that electoral rules work best when embedded within institutions capable of enforcing them fairly.

The danger in constitutional reform is that political actors focus on rules that appear advantageous in the short term. Yet governments change, parties rise and fall, and electoral coalitions shift. Constitutional arrangements designed to benefit today’s majority can easily disadvantage the same political forces tomorrow.

Sierra Leone should therefore judge electoral reform against a longer-term standard: does it strengthen citizens’ ability to choose, scrutinise and ultimately remove their representatives?

On this test, constituency-based FPTP retains important advantages. It gives communities identifiable representatives, creates opportunities for locally popular and independent candidates, provides strong incentives for local electoral scrutiny, and establishes a direct relationship between MPs and voters.

FPTP is not a perfect electoral system, and retaining it should not mean abandoning efforts to improve political inclusion, particularly the representation of women. But those objectives can be pursued through targeted reforms without sacrificing constituency representation.

The Constitution belongs neither to today’s government nor today’s opposition. The challenge is to build rules and institutions capable of commanding public confidence regardless of who happens to hold power. In Sierra Leone, retaining the constituency link while strengthening the institutions that guarantee free, fair and transparent elections offers the stronger foundation for doing so.

Hon. Ibrahim Barrie is the Member of Parliament for Bombali District, Sierra Leone, a lecturer and a PhD candidate at the University of Makeni.