SIERRA LEONE

Koroma wins Sierra Leone elections

Monday, September 17, 2007

Sierra Leone's opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma has won the West African country's presidential election, the National Electoral Commission says, in the first polls organised since UN peacekeepers pulled out of Sierra Leone in 2005.

Ernest Bai Koroma took oath Monday as Sierra Leone's new president after winning a tense runoff vote and vowed to wipe out graft and heal deep wounds in the impoverished war-scarred west African nation.
  
Koroma, 53, an opposition candidate who defeated outgoing vice president Solomon Berewa, also pledged to improve the lives of Sierra Leoneans who live in the world's second poorest country despite its vast diamond riches.
  
"We shall adopt zero tolerance on corruption and mismanagement of state funds," Koroma said in his inaugural speech at the State House, atop the seaside capital Freetown which is fringed by rolling hills.
  
"Sierra Leoneans have suffered for too long, we shall endeavour to ease your pain," he said.
  
Many Sierra Leoneans make do on less than a dollar a day or are jobless, and face perennial shortages of basic services such as running water and electricity.
  
"For this government, failure is not an option," Koroma said, warning that his government "shall not hesitate to deal firmly with those who choose to operate outside the law."
  
Koroma was declared winner after he garnered 54.6 percent of the vote in the run-off in the first election to be held in this country after the pull-out of 17,500 UN peacekeepers.
  
The election is the second after the end of a savage 10-year civil war which ended in 2001.
  
One of the most brutal wars in living memory, it led to the deaths of some 120,000 people and saw tens of thousands having their limbs amputated by combattants.
  
The conflict was fuelled by the so-called "blood diamonds" which were used to finance the violence spree unleashed by the Revolutionary United Front rebel group which started out with the aim of ending endemic corruption.
  
Koroma on Monday exhorted his countrymen to put their bloody past behind them.
  
"Let us begin the process of healing the wounds, let us resolve to reconcile ourselves as one nation," he said.
  
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday congratulated Koroma and hailed Sierra Leoneans for holding a largely peaceful election.
  
"The Secretary-General ... commends all Sierra Leonean parties and their supporters for exercising patience and restraint during the tallying of the votes," his press office said.
  
Koroma's victory, officially announced Monday, was greeted with dances and songs by jubilant supporters of the All People's Congress (APC), which won 59 of the 112 elected seats in the unicameral parliament.
  
Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly dressed in the party colour, red, lined the streets to cheers Koroma as he drove to the State House.
  
The election, which unfolded under the shadows of tension and pre-poll violence was keenly watched as a test to see if the country had truly emerged from the bloodshed and unrest.
  
The polls were somewhat marred by attempted rigging and fraud, leading the national election commission to annul results from 477 of the 6,157 polling stations.
  
Koroma, is from the young generation of politicians in a party notorious for its history of dictatorship and endemic corruption.
  
But he has refused to be held responsible for the APC's past and pledged to radically change the country's reputation of poor governance and poverty.
  
The charismatic and soft-spoken insurance executive was elected APC leader in 2002 and lost to his predecessor and outgoing president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in presidential elections that year.

There are no reactions so far.

Be the first user to react to this article.

You will only have to select the button <<REACT>> and fill the indicated fields.