2023-06-25 15:16:00
The vote count continued Sunday afternoon in Sierra Leone the day after the presidential election, where the outgoing Julius Maada Bio is seeking a second term against his main rival Samura Kamara.
The counting of ballots continued in particular in the capital Freetown, in Bo (west), Makeni and Port Loko (north), indicated the electoral commission.
Results are expected within 48 hours of the vote. No figure for participation was advanced Sunday afternoon. During the last elections, it had turned between 76 and 87%.
Around 3.4 million people were called upon to choose between 13 presidential candidates, a 2018 revenge-like ballot between Mr. Bio, a 59-year-old retired soldier, and Mr. Kamura, a 72-year-old technocrat. and leader of the All People’s Congress (APC).
Mr. Bio, candidate of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), then won the second round with 51.8% of the vote.
This year, Mr. Bio has championed education and women’s rights. He told AFP to favor agriculture and reduce his country’s dependence on food imports.
Mr. Kamara, Minister of Finance and then of Foreign Affairs before the advent of Mr. Bio in 2018, told AFP that he wanted to restore confidence in national economic institutions and attract foreign investors.
To be elected in the first round, a candidate must receive 55% of the valid votes.
In addition to their president, Sierra Leoneans also voted on Saturday to elect their parliament and local councils, polls marked by delays in the start of voting.
Election officials attacked
Several offices also closed late on Saturday, some at 11:30 p.m. (local and GMT), electoral commission chairman Mohamed Konneh said at a press conference on Sunday.
Nonetheless, Saturday was “one of the best election days” in Sierra Leone’s recent past “if not the best”, he added.
Mr. Kamara’s party, the APC, said in a statement that the electoral commission “made it impossible for us and other political parties to compare and verify” the tally. The commission found it “virtually impossible” to materialize the APC’s demands due to the volume of ballots to be counted.
The West African Network for Peacebuilding, another observer group, said on Saturday that the vote was “relatively peaceful”, echoing a similar finding from the electoral commission.
But the electoral commission said on Saturday that electoral agents were attacked by unknown persons in certain areas. Mr. Bio’s party has accused “senior officials” of the APC of attacking its electoral representatives.
APC officials in turn claimed that violence took place in several polling centers on Saturday night in Freetown and its members attacked in rural areas.
A national security official, Abdulai Caulker, said he was unaware of such incidents.
The high cost of living is the common concern of a very large majority of Sierra Leoneans. Prices of staples like rice have skyrocketed. Inflation in March was 41.5% over one year in this West African country of eight million inhabitants.
Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries on the planet, has been hard hit in recent years by Covid-19 and then the war in Ukraine.
The former British colony was already struggling to recover from a bloody civil war (1991-2002) and the Ebola epidemic (2014-2016).
Inflation and exasperation with the government sparked riots in August 2022 that left 27 civilians and six policemen dead.
These elections in Sierra Leone are closely followed in West Africa, after recent coups in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso.
25/06/2023 20:57:02 – Freetown (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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