The people of Sierra Leone are voting on Wednesday to choose a new leader who will be a successor to President Ernest Bai Koroma.
In all 16 candidates are vying for the presidential slot to take over from President Koroma who has been in power since 2007 and served his maximum two terms.
More than 3.1 million voters are registered for the elections with polls opening at 07:00 and closing at 18:00 local time across the country.
Chief commissioner of the National Election Commission (NEC), Mohamed Conteh said “We are prepared; we are committed to conduct credible elections.”
Among the 16 candidates vying for the top job are four key front runners. First is Samura Kamara of the All Peoples Congress (APC). He is Komora’s favorite to succeed him after handpicking him.
Kamara is a career politician and economist by training and has served as the country’s foreign minister until last year before stepping down to pursue his bid for the presidency.
Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) is another front runner who briefly led a junta government in 1996. He is running for a second time after losing to Koroma in 2012.
Kandeh Yumkella of the National Grand Coalition (NGC) split from the SLPP to form his own party last year, offering an alternative to the two-party race in Sierra Leonean politics since independence from Britain in 1961.
Samuel Sam-Sumana of the Coalition for Change (C4C) is the other front runner who was sacked as vice-president by President Koroma in 2015 and has since formed his own political party.
The next leader of this West African nation has a major task of fixing the country’s economic crisis caused by a collapse in iron ore prices and an Ebola epidemic.
A civil war in the 1990s, fueled by conflict over diamonds was fought in part by child soldiers in which tens of thousands of people were killed, wrecking the West African country’s economy.
Partial tallies of vote results are expected within 48 hours and complete results within two weeks.
Source: Africafeeds.com
