In a general election on Saturday, incumbent President Julius Maada Bio is running for a second and final term amid unhappiness over the country’s dire economic situation. Around 3.4 million Sierra Leoneans are scheduled to cast ballots.
Additionally, voters in the West African nation will choose representatives to the parliament and local council members.
The vote is the fifth presidential election since the end of the civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002 and resulted in more than 50,000 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Among the 13 contenders running for president, Bio, 59, is thought to be the front-runner. Samura Kamara, a candidate for the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) party who narrowly lost to Bio in the most recent election in 2018, is his biggest rival.
Former UN Under-Secretary-General Kandeh Yumkella, who finished third in 2018 but is not running again, has endorsed the president.
Even though election-related violence against the opposition has occasionally broken out near strongholds of the ruling party in the southeast, the campaigning has usually been peaceful.
“They keep attacking us… by destroying our campaign posters and attacking our supporters,” Kamara said, adding that his party office was set on fire in the southern city of Bo, while his convoy came under attack in another town.
In the interim, the ruling party has voiced complaints about attacks on their supporters in the opposition’s heartland in the north and the southern Pujehun District.
The use of aggressive rhetoric by the major parties during the campaign has also worried some voters.
“All I want is peace. I am scared by the high level of hatred I see being exhibited on social media by political extremists on both sides,” said a student at the University of Sierra Leone, who requested to remain anonymous.
Last week, Kamara demanded the resignation of the electoral commissioners, claiming his party could not trust them to conduct free and fair elections.
Kamara’s party has criticised Bio’s management of the economy and rising prices during the election campaign. The ruling party has attributed the nation’s economic difficulties to outside forces including the coronavirus outbreak and the conflict in Ukraine.
The top two candidates in Sierra Leone advance to a runoff two weeks following the declaration of the first-round results if no candidate receives 55% of the valid votes cast to win on the first ballot.