By Kabs Kanu
Just as feared by Sierra Leoneans and international elections observers ( who openly expressed concerns in press statements ) that the tallying process was questionable, the Elections Commission of Sierra Leone today released partial elections results of the presidential elections from the flawed process that have been roundly condemned by citizens and rejected by the opposition All People’s Congress ( APC ).
In the results of the 60% of the total votes announced by the Elections Commission, President Maada Bio was given 1,067,666 votes, which is 55.86% of the votes and his main rival Dr. Samura Kamara of the opposition All People’s Congress ( APC ) 793,751 votes which represented 41.53 percent. Bio is leading by 273, 915 votes .
But the only people who danced after the announcement were ardent SLPP supporters. Many Sierra Leoneans went to the social media to denounce the results because they found many discrepancies with the tabulation process and the computing of the figures.
In all, 3.4 million people registered to vote .
It has been a very tense few days since the chaotic elections on Saturday.
Now, we can put all the pieces together. On Sunday, a very angry Maada Bio, who knew he had lost the elections from the counting in the polling stations, sent troops to the APC office where jubilation had already started, to fire live bullets and they killed a poor woman. Bio knew from the RRF forms from the polling stations that he had lost the elections. Unlike 2018 when they had started jubilation prematurely , days before the results were announced, this time the SLPP were muted , no jubilation, no declaration of victory. Even the sassy, abrasive and loud First Lady, Fatima Bio , had disappeared from public view.
This morning, SLPP woke up with anger to file a Supreme Court injunction to stop the announcement of the results. They knew they had lost. Suspecting that the SLPP would unleash chaos, many people in some provincial towns stayed off the streets and shops and businesses remained closed.
But ECSL cooked the numbers for them through criminal tallying of votes as cautioned in writing even by the international community. APC has rejected the partial results , but some of us had been warning our party for months about this outcome.
APC , CITIZENS REJECT THE ELECTIONS RESULTS
The results stunned a lot of people at home and in the diaspora . They left everybody shocked and disappointed that democracy had not been served at all. Both in the capital , Freetown and other cities around the country people went about their businesses listlessly wondering what this latest elections robbery in their country means for them.
Many Sierra Leoneans lamented that it meant another 5 years of suffering, escalating food and commodity prices , tribalism , exclusive politics, lawlessness , bad governance , human rights abuses and merciless killings which have marked the rule of President Maada Bio.
In their shock and disappointment, many Sierra Leoneans wondered whether international elections observers, who had condemned the elections for lack of transparency and trust and the international community would do anything for them , while many others openly condemned the international community for their impotence. “They will condemn the process but what can they do ? They have not been known to undo criminal and rigged elections “, Mohamed Kamara said in one of the WhatsApp forums. Saidu Koroma said the very international community take some blame for the atrocities Maada Bio is committing in Sierra Leone . They empower him and make him feel that he is doing nothing wrong by giving him grants and financial aid and failing to sanction his government for human rights abuses.
Some people are doubting whether there will ever be peace in Sierra Leone where majority of the citizens are very angry and frustrated with Maada Bio and would consider this action by the Elections Commission as an imposition on them of an inept, hateful, tribalistic and wicked president that they had actually voted out of power.
The APC, meanwhile, have rejected the results outright and vowed to do everything in their power through the legal system to fight this robbery of the will of the people.
