Bio Emerges Winner Of Sierra Leone’s Presidential Election

Opposition challenger, Julius Maada Bio, clinched victory
Wednesday in Sierra Leone’s presidential vote, the country’s
election monitor said.

Bio, a former soldier, won 51.81 percent of the ballots in the
March 31 election compared with 48.19 percent for Samura Kamara,
said Mohamed Conteh, the head of the National Electoral
Commission.

The official results of the vote had been delayed by a dispute
over the method of tallying results that left ballot papers from
11,000 polling stations across the poor West African nation
uncounted.

Earlier Wednesday, Kamara supporters marched in the capital
Freetown, tearing down Bio posters and alleging “foreign meddling”
in the vote, an AFP reporter said.

Security forces erected a cordon around Bio’s SLPP party
headquarters, where hundreds of supporters had already begun
celebrating victory ahead of the expected official results.

Bio narrowly won the first round of voting ahead of Kamara, a
close ally of outgoing President Ernest Bai Koroma.

A total of 3.1 million people were registered to vote in the
first presidential poll since a 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak that
killed 4,000 people.

One of the world’s poorest nations despite huge mineral and
diamond deposits, Sierra Leone is recovering only gradually from
war and disease. Its economy remains fragile, with corruption
widespread in the former British colony.

AFP

Opposition challenger, Julius Maada Bio, clinched victory
Wednesday in Sierra Leone’s presidential vote, the country’s
election monitor said.

Bio, a former soldier, won 51.81 percent of the ballots in the
March 31 election compared with 48.19 percent for Samura Kamara,
said Mohamed Conteh, the head of the National Electoral
Commission.

The official results of the vote had been delayed by a dispute
over the method of tallying results that left ballot papers from
11,000 polling stations across the poor West African nation
uncounted.

Earlier Wednesday, Kamara supporters marched in the capital
Freetown, tearing down Bio posters and alleging “foreign meddling”
in the vote, an AFP reporter said.

Security forces erected a cordon around Bio’s SLPP party
headquarters, where hundreds of supporters had already begun
celebrating victory ahead of the expected official results.

Bio narrowly won the first round of voting ahead of Kamara, a
close ally of outgoing President Ernest Bai Koroma.

A total of 3.1 million people were registered to vote in the
first presidential poll since a 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak that
killed 4,000 people.

One of the world’s poorest nations despite huge mineral and
diamond deposits, Sierra Leone is recovering only gradually from
war and disease. Its economy remains fragile, with corruption
widespread in the former British colony.

AFP