Sierra Leone opposition leader wins presidential election runoff

Sierra Leone’s opposition candidate Julius Maada Bio has won the country’s presidential election re-run, the electoral commission said on Thursday.

Bio, a former military ruler, won 51.81 percent of the votes cast in last month’s election while Samura Kamara of the incumbent party took 48.19 percent of the votes. Voter turnout stood at 81 percents with 3.1 million people registered to vote.

This was Bio’s second bid for the presidency. He lost the 2012 election to outgoing president Ernest Bai Koroma.

In televised address Kamara said: “We dispute the results and we will take legal action to correct them,” adding that the results “do not reflect the party’s many concerns about massive ballot box stuffing, supernumerary votes, and other irregularities”.

Kamara has seven days to petition the west African country’s Supreme Court against the results.

The election is the fourth since Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war ended in 2002.

President Ernest Bai Koroma has served two terms and was barred by the constitution from running again.