Sierra Leonean President, Bio Wins Re-election

•Jonathan, Osinbajo sue for peace

By Olusegun Adeniyi in Freetown   

President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone was yesterday re-elected for another term of five years, according to the results declared by the country’s electoral commission.

According to the Chairman of Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL), Mohamed Kenewui Konneh, Bio of the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), secured 1,566,932 votes representing 56.17 per cent of the total votes cast in last Saturday’s general election.

He defeated 12 other candidates, including Dr Samura Kamara of the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC), who secured 1,148,262 votes, representing 41.16 per cent of total votes cast.   

According to Konneh, 11,712 polling station results were entered into the result database, representing 98.98 per cent of all polling stations across the country.

With 2,800,691 voters representing 83 per cent national turnout, the total number of valid votes cast was put at 2,789,808 while the total number of invalid votes was 10,883.

“A total number 120 polling stations were not entered into the result database due to either being tampered with and therefore quarantined at regional tally centres; or unavailability of result form caused by violence at identified polling stations,” Konneh stated while reaffirming that the invalid votes were not enough to materially affect the outcome. 

But the main opposition candidate, Kamara, has rejected the outcome.

Kamara, who Monday described the electoral process as “daylight robbery” said yesterday that he would not accept the declaration of Bio as winner.

“It is a sad day for our beloved country,” Kamara tweeted after the announcement, saying, “It is a frontal attack on our fledgling democracy. These results are not credible, and I categorically reject the outcome so announced by the electoral commission. I will rise above this travesty, and I commit myself to continue the fight for a better Sierra Leone.”

The presidential hopeful, however, echoed the position of his party, APC, whose officials had Monday vowed not to accept the result.

“In view of these grave infractions, abuse of the democratic process and unprecedented lack of inclusivity, transparency and accountability, the APC cannot in anyway accept these results. We totally reject the chief electoral commissioner’s announcement of such cooked-up figures,” the party stated. 

Meanwhile, immediately the result was announced, yesterday, Bio was sworn in at the State House for a second term. But amid concerns over a possible breakdown of law and order.

Former Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, and immediate past Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, had joined other heads of international election observation missions in appealing to the people of the country “to continue exercising patience and restraint.”

In a statement by Jonathan for West African Elders Forum, Osinbajo for the Commonwealth, Mr Hailemariam Boshe for the African Union and Mr Mohammed Ibn Chambas for ECOWAS, they urged “all Sierra Leoneans within and outside the country to refrain from any inflammatory language that could lead to violence, loss of lives and the destruction of the country.”

Shortly before the result was declared, yesterday, the National Election Watch (NEW), a coalition of local and international organisations that monitored the general election thanked the ECSL for providing them a comprehensive data regarding the “partial election results from 60% of polling stations across the country” released on Monday. 

The coalition claimed to have trained and deployed 6,000 observers across the country covering every polling centre.

“Of these observers, 750 were specially trained and deployed to a statisticallyrepresentative sample of polling stations across all the five regions and 16 districts in Sierra Leone, using the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology.” 

The coalition then declared: “Based on our PRVT findings and the ECSL data announced thus far, we are confident that once all votes are counted with integrity, voter turnout will be 77.3% +/- 1.7% (between 75.4% and 79%); and no candidate will reach the constitutional threshold of 55% of votes cast in the first round.”