Sierra Leone Election Commission confirms President Bio’s victory in presidential election

June 27 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone has confirmed on Tuesday the victory of the country’s president, Julius Maada Bio, after the presidential elections held this Saturday with 56.17 percent of the votes, so there will be no second round.

The results announced by the electoral commission in a statement thus confirmed the re-election of Bio, of the government Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), against his main rival, Samura Kamara, of the All People’s Congress (APC), which has harvested 41.16 percent of the ballots.

Bio has given a speech to the nation after the first official results, calling for calm and insisting that the electoral commission “is the only constitutional body with the power to manage, tabulate and announce electoral results.”

For its part, the APC has denounced that its observers “have not had access to participate nor have they been allowed to verify and certify the results, which is contrary to due process and best practices.”

“We cannot accept these results in any way. We totally reject the announcement by the president of the electoral commission of these cooked figures. We ask him to avoid announcing more results until all of them have been verified mutually and satisfactorily,” he said. Kamara’s party, according to a document collected by the newspaper ‘The Sierra Leone Telegraph’.