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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing