President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone appeared to be on track for re-election on Monday after the electoral commission reported that he had a commanding lead with 60% of the votes counted.
Following the first round of voting on Saturday, Bio received more votes—55.86%—than the necessary 55% to win.
With 1,067,666 votes, the incumbent easily defeated Samura Kamara, who received 793,751 votes, or 41.53 percent, according to the commission.
According to Mohamed Kenewui Konneh, chairman of the election commission, official results should be available in 48 hours.
For the election on Saturday, about 3.4 million individuals were registered to vote.
There were twelve men and one woman running for president, but Kamara of the All People’s Congress (APC) was Bio’s biggest rival.
Kamara was nearly defeated by Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in a runoff in 2018.
In his first tenure as president, the 59-year-old president, a former coup leader from the 1990s, has fought for women’s and education rights.
Former foreign and finance minister Kamara, 72, is presently being tried for allegedly misusing public funds while serving as foreign minister. He maintains that the case against him is politically motivated.
Even though the election was mainly peaceful and tranquilly had restored by Monday, security forces brutally dispersed opposition supporters on Sunday night at the APC party headquarters in Freetown.
According to a spokeswoman for the APC, a woman died during the violence.
- ‘Really traumatic’
“She was in the medical unit on the ground floor. As a nurse, she is. She worked in a small dispensary at our corporate offices, the spokesman said.
Ibrahim Conteh, the woman’s 25-year-old son, claimed to have recognized his mother’s body at the mortuary.
I require justice. He sobbed, “I just want to know who killed my mother“.
Police claimed to have used tear gas canisters “to disperse the crowd which was disturbing people on the road,” but they did not confirm the death.
An opposition party member from the UK named Abu Bakar Kargbo, 42, described the encounter as “like a horror film.”
We then noticed that live shots were being fired, the man remarked. “It was frightening… It resembled a horror movie”
Early on Monday, reporters noticed blood and bullet holes inside the APC headquarters.
A party secretary who declined to disclose her last name, Hannah, came back early on Monday to retrieve her suitcase and possessions that she had left behind the previous evening.
“People were rejoicing outdoors by dancing. They were content. I heard bullets and tear gas all of a sudden,” she continued, her voice breaking.
“It was really upsetting. I sobbed.”
