The Interim President of the newly launched Lawyers’ Society, Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah, has told The Nationalist newspaper in an exclusive interview that, “We are trying to protect this entity from the problems of politics.” He adds that, “it is in our Constitution that no Executive Member should take any government retainership or contract.”
Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah notes that with this new lawyers’ association, there are safeguards from it being politicized. He says the Lawyers’ Society aims at creating an alternative platform wherein legal minds can articulate issues of national importance free from politics.
He notes that the current Sierra Leone Bar Association has not served its purpose very well, adding further that theirs is not formed to replace the Bar Association but to complement it where it has been silent.
In a tweet, just after the launching at the New Brookfields Hotel in Freetown, Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah stated that he had “received an extraordinarily weighty mandate from my seniors, peers and other colleagues to lead an interim team of the LAWYERS’ SOCIETY which was launched in the presence of hundreds of lawyers. I’m humbled by the confidence reposed in me and every member of the interim team.
“We are aware of the enormity of this task and so we once again pledge our commitment to making the LAWYERS’ SOCIETY a strong pillar of the legal profession, a foremost watchdog of our democracy and a crucial advocate and defender of the rule of law and the Constitution of Sierra Leone”.