FREETOWN - Sierra Leone’s President Re-elected, Barely Avoiding a Runoff.
The Main Opposition Candidate Has Rejected the Results, and Election Observers Have Raised Concerns over the Lack of Transparency during the Vote Count.
President Julius Maada Bio won re-election in the West African nation of Sierra Leone on Tuesday, a result rejected by his main opponent and questioned by some observers who cited a lack of transparency in the vote tallying.
Mr. Bio took 56 percent of the vote, according to the country’s electoral commission, just clearing the threshold of 55 percent required to avoid the runoff that most analysts had predicted.
Samura Kamara, the leading opposition candidate, finished second with 41 percent of the vote. Mr. Bio was quickly sworn in — just an hour after the official results were announced.
International election observers have voiced concerns about the lack of transparency during the counting process. National Election Watch, an independent monitoring body, had said earlier on Tuesday that no candidate would win 55 percent of the vote in the first round, based on the data it had collected and which it said matched provisional results released by the country’s electoral commission on Monday.
Election observers from the Carter Center noted several voting irregularities, including broken seals and open ballot boxes that should have been closed... “There’s a lot of questions left on the table," said Cameron R. Hume, a former U.S. ambassador and the head of the center’s observation mission.
