The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on Sunday said it is “satisfied” with Sierra Leone’s run-off presidential vote as vote counting continued, but noted intimidating levels of security at some polling stations.
The second-round vote pitted challenger Julius Maada Bio of the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party, against the ruling All Peoples’ Congress (APC) candidate Samura Kamara, a close ally of outgoing Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma.
Bio came out narrowly ahead in the first round of voting last month, but the result of Saturday’s run-off election was not expected before yesterday or today, after all the votes from 11,000 polling stations are counted in the West African nation.
“We are on the view that the election took place in an environment that [was] peaceful, that the process was transparent and credible,” said Amos Sawyer, head of the monitoring group sent by the 15-nation ECOWAS.
The observation mission “is satisfied with the conduct” of the vote, though there were some “issues,” he added.
Bloc observers said that some polling stations opened late and also voiced concern at the “sometimes intimidating” deployment of armed security agents at voting centers that “caused panic among voters.”
The government had said that the tight security was to ensure a peaceful poll, but the opposition feared it could dissuade some supporters from turning out.
The election results would be tight, analysts have said.
Bio, 53, on Saturday said that the voting appeared peaceful and added he found the process to be “fair, transparent and credible.”
He was credited with 43.3 percent to 42.7 for Kamara — a margin of just 15,000 votes — after the March 7 first round in the West African country where political loyalties are often divided along ethnic lines, and traumatic memories of the 1991-to-2002 civil war run deep.
A total of 3.1 million people were registered to vote in the first presidential poll since a 2014-to-2016 Ebola outbreak that killed 4,000 people.
Also marring outgoing Koroma’s decade-long tenure was a mudslide that struck the capital, Freetown, last year, killing hundreds of people.
International observers — from the EU and the African Union as well as ECOWAS — were deployed throughout the country and were also monitoring the vote counting.
One of the world’s poorest nations, despite huge metals and diamond deposits, Sierra Leone is recovering only gradually from war and disease. Its economy remains in a fragile state, with widespread corruption.
An economist by training, Kamara, 66, was minister of foreign affairs until last year, when he stepped down to pursue the presidency under the APC flag, despite lacking strong party support.
He has promised to deliver improvements in health, education and infrastructure.
The key to victory lies with whoever wins Kono, a diamond-rich district in the east of the country generally regarded as a “swing state,” Abu said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion