Sierra Leone rivals in runoff, Egyptians indifferent to poll

With the results widely believed to be more or less predicable, the presidential election in Egypt is widely considered to be cosmetic.

By all indications, the iron-fisted current ruler, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, will register an easy victory during the poll to be held in three days between March 26 and 28.

By some coincidence, the Egyptian poll will run concurrently with the second round of the recently held Sierra Leone presidential election, which ended without any conclusive winner.

FINAL CONTEST

According to Sierra Leone's National Electoral Commission chairman Mohamed Conteh, who announced the outcome on Tuesday evening, the rerun is slated for March 27.

The final contest will see first round winner Julius Maada Bio face off with Samura Kamara.

According to NEC officials, the protracted campaigns were supposed to start immediately after the announcement of the final results of the first round.

TURNOUT

While Kamara is viewed as the "continuation” candidate, Brig Bio is depicted as the change option representing the formidable Sierra Leonean People’s Party.

The top opposition party has over the years alternated with the ruling party in power, and Brig Bio ran on its ticket when he won the first round of the recent presidential poll, securing 43.3 per cent of the vote.

Some 3.1 million Sierra Leoneans were registered to vote, but according to NEC 2,537,122 did, representing 85 per cent turnout, even as some 139,427 votes were declared invalid.

CHIPS DOWN

Although the turnout was impressively high by African standards, the announcement of the results was repeatedly postponed, a development the country’s electoral commission blamed on complaints of irregularities by opposition parties.

During the first round poll on March 7 Brig Bio, the 53-year-old former military coup leader, came out on top with 1,097,482 votes.

He however fell far short of the 55 per cent needed to avoid a second round, and when the chips were down he was in fact only slightly ahead of Kamara.

The latter, who ran on the ticket of the ruling All People’s Congress, was reportedly the anointed successor of the incumbent, President Ernest Bai Koroma.

COALITION

Clearly a very strong candidate, he garnered 1,082,748 votes, representing 42.7 per cent of the votes cast, and was behind by just 0.6 per cent of the total ballots cast.

The other candidates for the presidency were relative minions, but their votes will now be crucial for the anticipated coalition formation prior to the rerun.

According to the final NEC figures, in the third place was Kandeh Yumkella of the National Grand Coalition, with 174,014 votes, representing 6.9 per cent.

MINNOWS

He was followed by former vice-president Samuel Sam-Sumana, who garnered 87,720, representing 3.5 per cent of the votes.

As matters stand, the two contenders in the second round will need to approach the candidates who came third and fourth, as their support will be crucial.

The expected horse-trading will be tricky, however, given that the two apparent minnows were at one time members of the leading candidates' current parties.

RESIGNED

While former vice-president Sam-Sumana was expelled from the ruling party in controversial circumstances, Yumkella resigned from the main opposition party some time back.

Should Brig Bio win the re-run, whose result is also widely deemed as too close to call, it will be the second time he has led Sierra Leone.

NO STRANGERS

Having briefly headed a military junta in 1996, he surprised many when he stood down in favour of the democratically elected Ahmad Tejan Kabbah three months later.

Surprisingly, the two contestants in the March 27 rerun are by no means strangers in the political realm, given that they interacted closely when Bio headed his short-lived military junta.

Intriguingly, during his brief stint as the head of state, Brig Bio made Kamara as his finance minister.

MISNOMER

Back to Egypt, despite a provision for a second round in April, President el-Sisi has made it virtually impossible for any credible opponent to challenge him in the first round.

According to observers, the word ‘”election” appears to be a misnomer as army chief-turned-president el-Sisi, who came to power four years ago, is more or less guaranteed to be re-elected for a second term.

OUTLAWED

The strongman began his first term in office after winning the 2014 election with a massive albeit disputed 97 per cent of the vote.

That election came after el-Sisi led a 2013 coup that deposed his democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement.

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