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Sierra Leone: Voting concludes peacefully in presidential election – awaiting results
Sierra Leone already has successfully held mostly peaceful votes since the end of the war. This time the country is bearing the sole responsibility for securing the vote, even though it is being organized with substantial foreign aid of some 46 percent of the election budget.
“Sierra Leone has experienced 11 years of war and now we want peace. So when the results are finally declared, if the elections are conducted in a free, fair and credible manner, everybody should accept it and cooperate with the government of the day,” said Marian Faux, who was voting in Freetown.
Koroma’s APC party is expected to draw strong support in the north and in the capital, though he also appears to be making some inroads in traditional opposition strongholds. It’s unclear, though, whether he can garner the 55 percent of ballots needed to win outright and avert a runoff.
He faces eight challengers including the leading opposition figure Bio, a retired brigadier-general from the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP). Bio calls himself the “father of democracy” after his brief three-month tenure as head of state in 1996 before handing over power to a democratically elected civilian government.
Bio and his supporters maintain the president has failed to deliver on his 2007 election promises and does not deserve a second term.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
