May 11, 2021
Albert Baron Ansu
The howling and yelling that had characterized the enactment of the midterm census has today been put rest. By law the 21 days since the instrument was tabled before parliament has elapsed today and with no objection of required ninety plus lawmakers, the instrument has become a law.
Under the charge of the Speaker Dr Abass Bundu, Parliament will this morning consummate the legal process leading to the gazette of the document. It is unclear what the response of the opposition All Peoples Congress, (APC) will be now that the instrument they had opposed has in keeping with due process satisfied the requirement of statutory instrument.
In the face of vitriolic objection characterized by acts of vandalism to subvert the Presidential order that introduced the midterm census before parliament, the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party had remained unfazed in the conviction that the mid-term census is done in all sincerity for the good of the country in aiding national development planning and restoring integrity to the discredited census data of 2015 that was tainted with discrepancy.
According to Part 11 sub section 2 of the Census Act 2002, the President may from time to time, on the advice of the Minister, by order of made by statutory instrument, direct a census to be taken of the population.
Statistics Sierra Leone has assured that the planned census will be conducted comprehensively using the state of the art technology as opposed to the paper-centric approach. Why the opposition has been putting up stout resistance to the passage of the law is even suspect, “as though they have something to hide, “opined Mahmud Turay, student of IPAM