{"id":225720,"date":"2023-06-21T09:45:15","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T01:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=225720"},"modified":"2023-06-21T09:45:15","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T01:45:15","slug":"sierra-leoneans-to-vote-as-economic-crisis-bites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=225720","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Leoneans to vote as economic crisis bites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of March, the latest month on record, yearly inflation stood at 41.5 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some 3.4 million people are registered to vote. Polling opens at 7:00 am and closes at 5:00 pm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presidential candidates must clinch 55 percent of the vote for a first-round win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under a new gender act, one-third of the parliamentary candidates must be women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 60 percent of registered voters are between 18 and 35 years old, according to the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also said he would prioritise agriculture and reducing food imports next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is currently on trial for embezzling public funds while he was foreign minister, in a case his supporters believe is politically motivated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the parliamentary election, it forecasts that SLPP will win between 56 and 61 percent of seats, with APC claiming the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two main parties waited until just a month before elections to release their manifestos. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":225722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225720"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225723,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225720\/revisions\/225723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/225722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=225720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=225720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}