The three Appeals Court Judges, Justice Reginald Fynn, Justice Alusine Sesay and Justice Allan Halloway yesterday June 29th, 2017, nullified the SLPP lower lever zonal elections held on 28th June, 2017, stating “it is outside the scope of the orders of the court to rerun the 39 constituency elections”.
Meanwhile, it could be recalled that the Appeals court ruling on the 5th June, 2017, order that SLPP to rerun elections for 39 out of 112 constituencies across the country, due to what the judges referred to as irregularities in the process.
After the orders of the court, the SLPP National Executive Council (NEC) released a time table adding zonal, sectional and chiefdom elections. The zonal elections took place on Wednesday 28th June, 2017. However, that decision was vehemently condemned by other supporters of the party who interpreted that the court’s ruling specifically reference the rerun of constituency and district executive elections, and not zonal and chiefdom’s executives.
Against this backdrop, the three Appeals Court Judges led by Honourable Justice Reginald Sydney Fynn said both parties took it upon themselves to interpret the works of the Appeals Court instead of asking for what they did not understand. As a result, the Justice said that the judiciary has noted that it was in that ground that both parties got confused.
Honourable Justice Reginald Sydney Fynn added that he acknowledged the fact that if there was anything to interpret then that could have been done amicably had the Judges been contacted. As a result, the judges ruled that the process to rerun the elections should only be applied for the 12 districts and 39 constituency lower level elections.
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Newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone.