Sierra Leone’s NEC release guidelines for presidential run off poll

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Mohammed Conteh, Head of the Sierra Leone Electoral Commission

Mohammed Conteh, Head of the Sierra Leone Electoral Commission

The Sierra Leone’s National Electoral Commission (NEC) has released  campaign calendar and guidelines for the presidential run-off election scheduled  for March 27.

NEC has announced a run-off in the country’s presidential election as no candidate scored the mandatory 55 per cent votes in the March 7 election which  witnessed  84 per cent turn out.

The opposition candidate, Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone’s Peoples Party (SLPP) led the final result with 1,097, 482 votes, making 43.3 per cent of the 2, 537,122 valid votes cast in the polls.

Samura Kamara of ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) came a close second with 1,082, 748 votes, representing 42.7 per cent of the total votes cast.

A statement issued by NEC in Freetown and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja,  noted that  the two political parties and their candidates could campaign across the 16 Administrative districts of the country  from March 15 to March 25.

According  to the released guidelines each of the two parties would be  granted exclusive permit on specific days in designated Districts to avoid clashes.

As part of preparations for the run-off vote NEC is procuring new ballot papers bearing the photographs of the two candidates as against the previous design with 16 candidates.

The Commission is also expected to retrain polling officials and ready the electoral machinery for hitch-free voting.

The winner of the run off will replace out-going President Ernest Bai Koroma of the APC who has completed his constitutionally allowed two terms of five years each.

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READ: Sierra Leone Elections: Maada Bio, Kamara for run-off March 27

The APC and the SLPP have dominated political power of Sierra  Leone since independence from Britain in 1961.

Meanwhile,  a statement  issued by  the Mr Paul Ejime,  the spokesman for the ECOWAS Mission in Sierra Leone  said that the mission was on ground  to monitor  the process. 

“The Core Team of ECOWAS Long-Term Observers, including Secretariat staff of the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC), is on ground monitoring the electoral processes.

“The ECOWAS Observation Mission is supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), European Union and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).

Meanwhile, from the 24 parliamentary results released Thursday by NEC, the APC has 13 seats, SLPP 10, and the Coalition for Change (C4C) one seat.

The country has 144-seat unicameral parliament, made up of 132 contested seats and 12 complemented seats for Paramount Chiefs.

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