Sierra Leone’s President Bio leading in provisional vote results

Provisional results from Sierra Leone’s presidential election show that President Julius Maada Bio is leading with 60 percent of votes counted, the West African country’s electoral commission said on Monday.

“The results detailed below are partial and do not represent the complete outcome of the Presidential election,” the statement said.

Bio is seeking re-election after defeating Samura Kamara of All People’s Congress (APC), a former foreign affairs minister in the West African state, in 2018. Saturday’s vote was seen as a rematch between the duo even though 11 other candidates also ran for the presidency.

A provisional results sheet showed Bio had received over one million votes so far, compared with just under 800,000 for Kamara. Final verified results will be announced within the next 48 hours, the commission said.

The June 24 vote was the fifth since the end of Sierra Leone’s civil war in 2002 and was held amid high unemployment and inflation, as well as growing violent rhetoric.

Voting during the presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections was mostly peaceful.

But on Sunday, Chief Electoral Commissioner Mohamed Konneh outlined a number of districts where he said polling staff had been attacked by members of the public.

Also, Kamara said on Twitter that live bullets had been fired at his office inside the party headquarters.

Many polling stations opened and closed late in Freetown on Saturday, with voting officially ending at 11:30pm (23:30 GMT), according to Konneh.