FREETOWN, June 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Sierra Leoneans will vote in tense elections on Saturday, with President Julius Maada Bio hoping to secure a second term despite a crippling economic crisis which helped spark deadly protests last year.
The West African country, which never fully recovered economically from a 1991-2002 civil war and the Ebola epidemic a decade later, was further pummelled by the Covid pandemic and fallout from the war in Ukraine.
There are 13 candidates in the race for the top office, but Bio’s main rival is Samura Kamara, a bookish technocrat with the opposition All People’s Congress (APC), who came second in the last election in 2018.
This time around, however, the country of eight million is gripped by a dire cost-of-living crisis which contributed to riots last August that left more than 30 dead.
As of March, the latest month on record, yearly inflation stood at 41.5 percent.
Some 3.4 million people are registered to vote. Polling opens at 7:00 am and closes at 5:00 pm.
Presidential candidates must clinch 55 percent of the vote for a first-round win.
Voters will also elect members of parliament and local councils under a new proportional representation system after a last-minute switch from a first-past-the-post system.
Under a new gender act, one-third of the parliamentary candidates must be women.
About 60 percent of registered voters are between 18 and 35 years old, according to the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR).
At the helm of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), Bio, 59 — a former coup leader who spent three months as head of state in the 1990s — championed education and women’s rights during his first mandate.
He also said he would prioritise agriculture and reducing food imports next.
Kamara, 72 — a former finance and foreign minister who lost to Bio in a 2018 runoff — said he would restore confidence in the country’s economic institutions and bring in foreign direct investment.
He is currently on trial for embezzling public funds while he was foreign minister, in a case his supporters believe is politically motivated.
A June 14 poll by the IGR, a partner of the pan-African pollster Afrobarometer, forecasts that Bio will win 56 percent of the vote with Kamara receiving 43 percent.
In the parliamentary election, it forecasts that SLPP will win between 56 and 61 percent of seats, with APC claiming the rest.
The two main parties waited until just a month before elections to release their manifestos. — NNN-AGENCIES
