SIERRA LEONE. MAADA BIO, RE-ELECTION CONTESTED
(July 2ND, 2023)
FREETOWN. Julius Maada Bio will be the president of the Republic of Sierra Leone for another five years, having won, according to the electoral commission (ECSL) 56.17% of the votes in the presidential elections of June 24th.
His main opponent, Samura Kamara, collected 41.16%: 2.67% went to 11 other candidates.
In this way, the President, candidate of the People’s Party (SLPP) avoids the ballot, since the electoral law provides that if no candidate for the presidency wins 55% of the preferences, a two-way confrontation is called with the presence of the best-placed suitors.
Something similar happened in the legislatures: the SLPP won 81 of the 135 seats in the national assembly, while the APC, a political formation that supported Kamara, elected 54. The chamber is made up of 14 traditional leaders.
For Maada Bio this is the second consecutive mandate, so in five years he will no longer be able to re-apply, unless, as often happens in Africa, the Constitution is not modified to allow him a re-nomination.
Since the internal war ended in Sierra Leone (1991-2002) this is the fifth popular consultation for the choice of the president, parliament and local authorities.
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COMPLAINTS OF BROUGHT
The opposition, especially the defeated candidate, denounced serious irregularities.
Even before the elections Kamara had said:
“We will not accept prefabricated or falsified results” and after the ballot was completed in a tweet he wrote: “I categorically reject the result”, adding that in various areas there was fraud and supernumerary votes compared to the voters registered on the lists.
The APC, All people’s Congress, his party, furthering the dose, declares that it is unknown from which regions of the country the data released by the electoral commission come from and that the vote took place in an intimidating atmosphere.
The same point of view was expressed regarding the outcome of the legislative elections: after the electoral commission announced their outcome on July 1st, the APC defined in a statement, once again “rigged” even these consultations, promising that he will boycott parliamentary business.
Even observers from the European Union, in a press conference, declared that the lack of transparency on the entire electoral process (voting operations, counting, announcement of results) leads to fears that the final outcome does not correspond to reality.
(rfi.fr wrote that the real result of the presidential elections would be Bio, 50%, Kamara, 46%).
The European Union Observer Mission has invited the ECSL
to publish the data for each polling station as soon as possible, to allow for public scrutiny of the results, because some oddities have emerged:
1. a surprisingly low number of invalid ballots nationwide;
2. a very high turnout, exceeding 95 per cent in at least three districts (the average for the whole country stood at 83 per cent).
Mohamed Kenewui Konneh, chairman of the commission, promised that all the results will be uploaded to the website as soon as possible, even if “it will take some time”.
US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France and the European Union stressed their concern about the lack of transparency in the tabulation process and noted that in several areas of the country the voting operations were hampered by logistical problems, such as lack of ballots or absence of tellers.
Finally, they urged everyone “to show restraint, to respect the rule of law and to engage in peaceful dialogue to resolve disputes”. The fear that a new internal war could break out in Sierra Leone is clear here.
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VIOLENCES
There was no lack of violence, both during and after the vote: the EU observers themselves declare that they have witnessed attacks and clashes in seven polling stations with open polls and in three others during the counting.
They then denounced that the police, on the evening of June 24th, at the APC headquarters in Freetown, intervened heavily causing the death of a woman. The police justified themselves by declaring that they had intervened to put down a demonstration by Kamara’s supporters.
For its part, the online newspaper Sahara Reporters writes in an article that appeared on June 27th that in Masiaka, a northern province, policemen and soldiers opened fire on APC members while they protested, killing four guys and raping a fifth.
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JULIUS MAADA BIO
Once the election results have been published, Julius Maada Bio, 59, has taken the oath of office as required by the constitution.
An army officer participates with a young officer in a coup d’état on April 29th, 1992: the goal is to overthrow president Saidu Momoh. After that, the power is assumed by a barely 26-year-old captain, Valentine Strasser. Four years later, in January 1996 Maada Bio, then vice president, carries out another coup defined as “democratic” against Strasser himself: he will remain in power for a few months to hand it over, after the March elections, to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a senior official of the United Nations. While he is at the head of the military junta he appoints his current opponent Finance Minister.
Having finished his task, Bio goes to the United States to take a degree in international relations.
In 2005 he returned to his homeland, deciding to enter politics: he joined the SLPP and was nominated for the 2012 presidential elections. His opponent is President Ernest Baï Koroma. Bio loses, collecting only 37% of ballots.
The glory comes six years later: in 2018 he is once again a presidential candidate: in the first round, he unexpectedly obtains 43.3%, while Kamara wins 42.7%.
on the run-off, he won the presidency with 51.8% against 48.2% of his rival.
In his first mandate, he invests a lot of money to relaunch education and promotes a campaign against corruption, but the legacy of the war and the Ebola epidemic is heavy and a third of the inhabitants live below the poverty line.
When, as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the prices of the main products skyrocket, popular anger breaks out in Freetown and in the other main Sierra Leonean cities (August 2022): during the protests the police are heavy-handed and at least 20 people were killed.
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INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS
Before the general elections of June 24th, in January of this year, the parliament modifies the electoral law establishing that the distribution of seats takes place according to the proportional method, rather than with the first-past-the-post method, inherited from British colonization.
It also establishes that one third of the seats are compulsorily assigned to female candidates.
The first reform aroused the unfavorable reaction of the APC which had the majority in the previous legislature: evidently it feared, as it later happened, of losing many secure constituencies.
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HISTORY OF SIERRA LEONE
A LONG TRAIL OF BLOOD
The history of Sierra Leone is a review of all the horrors that can happen in a poor country, but equipped with raw materials that are tempting to all: its subsoil hides huge reserves of diamonds and bauxite, the raw material from which the aluminum, as well as gold and possibly oil.
Precisely the trafficking of diamonds, defined as “bloody”, are the fuel of the numerous conflicts that mark the path of this small West African nation.
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TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE
A British colony since the 19th century, it obtained internal self-government after the end of the Second World War. The country’s leader is Sir Milton Margai (1895 – 1964) who held the position of Prime Minister for ten years. Upon his death, power passed to his brother Sir Albert who was however deposed by a first coup d’état (March 21st, 1967) led by David Lansana, head of the armed forces. Years of instability followed until siaka Stevens (1905 – 1988) became premier and subsequently second President of the Republic, proclaimed on April 19th, 1971.
Stevens, who will rule the country for 14 years, will concentrate all power in his own hands and will impose that the All People’s Congress (APC) is the single party. His reign ends in 85, giving new breath to the numerous forces that try to break up the state. For seven years the supreme power was assumed by the armed forces which lead Joseph Saidu Momoh (1985 – 1992) to the presidency, but when he opens up to multi-partyism, war breaks out.
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THE BLOOD BATH (1991 – 2002)
With the beginning of the 90’s all of West Africa is shaken by conflicts which will soon affect a vast area in which the “warlords” act. Also in Sierra Leone on the scene the figure of a war lord is looming: Fodai Sanko who founds the RUF (Revolutionary United Front): this is a guerrilla movement that feeds on the illegal trafficking of diamonds and fights with ferocity, also using of children-soldiers whoever hinders one’s march towards power.
The RUF’s struggle lays bare the fragility of the structures of the Sierra Leonean state and only with the contribution of the UN and Great Britain, the former colonial power, was it possible to re-establish a certain institutional normality in 1998, with a view to complete reconciliation.
The wounds of a war will remain in which mutilations, looting, village fires, rapes, mass murders took place, costing the lives of perhaps 120,000 people.
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EBOLA
After painstakingly restoring peace in 2002, Sanko arrested, the RUF dissolved, the country resumed its path, but in 2014 an Ebola epidemic broke out that the authorities were unable to control: for two years the evil spread and also affected the countries neighbors such as Guinea Conakry and Liberia. only in 2016 the disease is tamed.
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SIERRA LEONE
The Republic of Sierra Leone, located in western Africa, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, borders with Guinea Conakry to the north and east and with Liberia: it occupies an area of 71,740 sq km. and is populated by 8.6 million inhabitants.
Independent since April 27th, 1961, it plays a special role during the centuries of the slave trade from Africa to the American continent. A part of its population descends from slaves freed in the 19th century and brought back to Africa by philanthropic companies who wanted to bring those people back to their homeland.
The capital, Freetown, (literally “free city”, became the place of arrival of former slaves
repatriated in 1787.
In recent years, the country has recorded progress in the economy, even if the long wars and the aforementioned epidemics still place it in the last places in the world ranking of the human development index.
PIER LUIGI GIACOMONI