Political watchers do not yet know how to classify the trend of African presidential contests ending in a run-off. The numbers are mounting. In the last six months alone, about five elections have gone through run-off. Now, Sierra Leone is joining the group. The country’s National Electoral Commission, NEC, has fixed March 27 for the run-off in the presidential election held about two weeks ago. No candidate scored the mandatory 55 per cent votes required to win in the first ballot.
After announcing the scores of all the sixteen candidates in the contest, the NEC Chairman, Mohamed Conteh, said a run-off was inevitable. According to him, the main opposition candidate, Julius Bio of Sierra Leone’s Peoples Party, SLPP, polled 1,097, 482 votes, making 43.3 per cent of the valid votes cast in the polls. Samura Kamara of the ruling All Peoples Congress, APC, came second with 1,082, 748 votes, representing 42.7 per cent of the total votes cast.
The NEC boss released other results as follows, Kolle Yemkulla of National Grand Coalition (NGC), 174,014 votes; Kamaraimba Mansaray, Alliance Democratic Party (ADP), 26,704 votes, Musa Tarawally, Citizens’ Democratic Party (CDP), 11,493 votes, Samuel Sam-Sumana of Coalition for Change (C4C) polled 87,720 votes; Chernoh Bah, National Democratic Alliance (NDA), 8,344 votes and John O’Dwyer, National Progressives Democrats (NPD), 34, 239 votes.
The scores of six other candidates ranging from Patrick Sandy of the National Unity and Reconciliation Party (NURP) who polled 2,318 votes, to Olufemi Claudius-Cole of Unity Party (UP), who scored 3, 825 votes.
It remains to be seen how the two front runners will joggle to win the support of the fourteen candidates and their supporters in the run-off polls.
