Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) supporters react near a poster depicting Julius Maada Bio, the presidential candidate for the (SLPP) in Freetown, Sierra Leone April 4, 2018. REUTERS/Olivia Acland
April 4, 2018
By Umaru Fofana
FREETOWN (Reuters) – Opposition candidate Julius Maada Bio won a narrow victory in a run-off election to become Sierra Leone’s next president, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) announced on Wednesday.
Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) won 51.81 percent of votes cast in the March 31 poll, defeating former foreign affairs minister and ruling All People’s Congress (APC) candidate Samura Kamara, who garnered 48.19 percent.
Maada Bio, who briefly ruled Sierra Leone as head of a military junta in 1996, will replace outgoing President Ernest Bai Koroma, who could not seek re-election due to term limits.
“The new president will be sworn in tonight,” Chief Justice Abdulai Hamid Charm told Reuters ahead of the announcement.
SLPP supporters began celebrating in the streets of the capital Freetown on Wednesday evening in anticipation of the official announcement of results.
“I feel happy about the results. I am here because my president Julius Maada Bio has won the election in this country,” said Adolfus Kargbo, among a group of SLPP supporters chanting Maada Bio’s name.
SLPP officials urged the party’s backers to remain calm.
“Celebrate responsibly. Do not disturb your neighbor. Victory for all men, not victory for some. Everyone in, no one out,” the party’s campaign manager Ali Kabba told Maada Bio’s supporters gathered at a Freetown hotel.
The largely peaceful election process has come as a relief for the country of 7 million people, who endured a civil war in the 1990s and whose economy was dragged down by an Ebola epidemic in 2014-15 and a global slump in commodity prices in 2015.
(Writing by Aaron Ross and Joe Bavier; Editing by James Dalgleish and Sandra Maler)
