Sierra Leone’s opposition candidate and former military junta leader Julius Maada Bio was sworn in as new president late on Wednesday, just hours after the elections commission announced his victory in a tight run-off poll.
He was handed a symbolic command baton by the country’s top judge. But hopes for a smooth transition were soon thrown into doubt after his main opponent, the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) candidate, Samura Kamara said he was rejecting the National Election Commission’s results.
“We dispute the results and we will take legal action to correct them,” Kamara said in a televised address, calling on his supporters to stay calm. The results, he added, “do not reflect the party’s many concerns about massive ballot box stuffing, supernumerary votes, and other irregularities.”
Bio, who briefly ruled Sierra Leone as head of a military junta in 1996, replaces outgoing President Ernest Bai Koroma, who could not seek re-election due to term limits. Dressed in traditional white robes, Bio was sworn in just before midnight at a hotel in the capital Freetown, raising in the air the Bible upon which he swore the oath of office to the cheers of supporters.
“This is the dawn of a new era. The people of this great nation have voted to take a new direction,” he said in a speech following the short ceremony in which he made an appeal for national unity. We have only one country, Sierra Leone, and we are all one people.”
He now faces the difficult task of rebuilding the impoverished country’s nation’s economy that was dragged down by the world’s deadliest Ebola epidemic and a global slump in commodity prices.
Representing the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), Maada Bio won 51.81 percent of votes cast in the March 31 poll, according to results announced by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) on Wednesday. APC candidate, Kamara, who had held a slight lead based on partial results earlier in the day but in the end garnered 48.19 percent.
The official results of the vote had been delayed by a dispute over the method of tallying that left ballot papers from 11,000 polling stations uncounted. The campaign was characterised by ugly verbal exchanges and sporadic violence with Bio accusing the APC of using police intimidation against his party.
Police reported a string of attacks on candidates and supporters on both sides since the first round on March 7 which Bio narrowly won after which Kamara declared that “the safety and security of Sierra Leone is in our hands.”
Bio, a straight-talking retired brigadier, has blasted the government’s closeness to China, while Kamara had presented himself as a continuity candidate. Although international observers reported some “issues” during the March 31 second round that saw heightened security measures, the monitors declared themselves “satisfied” with the overall conduct of the poll.
Earlier Wednesday, Kamara supporters marched in Freetown, tearing down Bio posters and alleging “foreign meddling” in the vote, an AFP reporter said.
-Sun