Freetown, Sierra Leone — It is hard to walk down a street in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, without hearing crackly radios blaring out election results after Tuesday's presidential and parliamentary poll.
The whole nation seems to be glued to the radio, giddy with expectation to find out who might have won the presidential poll and who will be the new president.
Market women, traders, professionals as well as street hawkers - bearing on their heads and shoulders an array of watches, indigo cloth, groundnuts, and pushing wheelbarrows of fresh coconuts - all seem to be carrying a radio with their free hand, stuck to their ears.
The radio station of the UN Mission in Sierra Leone, Unamsil, has been broadcasting election results as they come in from across the country: so has the state run radio of the Sierra Leone Broadcasting System, SLBS.
Results to date indicate that the incumbent, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, is leading the field, and may win an outright first round victory. His governing Sierra Leone People's Party is also doing well with the number of seats it has won in the 112-seat parliament.
Emerging in second place is Ernest Bai Koroma, the presidential flag bearer of the former ruling All People's Party (APC), which has also netted itself some parliamentary seats.
There have been some surprises.
The Movement for Progress (MoP) of the only woman candidate of the 9 contenders, running for president, Zainab Hawa Bangura, appears to be doing poorly on both counts, the presidential and parliamentary results tally.
The former rebel Revolutionary United Front, which has transformed itself into a political party, led by Alimamy Pallo Bangura, is failing to live up to its own, and electoral, expectations.
The Peace and Liberation (PLP) party of a former military leader, Johnny Paul Koroma, has polled well in the west district of Freetown, gaining an expected two seats in parliament. Koroma also won his own seat, which means he is heading to parliament.
The results of the special early vote by the army and other security agencies last week Friday appeared to have favoured Koroma, giving the impression that he still retains support among the military.
But that separate announcement of results from the special voting has infuriated some elements of the armed forces, who felt this violated the anonymity of their vote.
On Thursday the national electoral commissioner, Walter Nicol, issued a statement stressing that it was not only the security forces who voted last Friday. Nicol was at pains to reassure the military, while informing Sierra Leoneans, that the early special vote included many other essential staff, as well as journalists and others, who would be unable to cast their ballots on Tuesday, because they would be on duty.
Koroma, now a born-again Christian, led a military coup that ousted Kabbah from power in 1997. Kabbah was reinstated by West African peacekeepers the following year. He has remained in office since, bolstered by a massive deployment of thousands of United Nations' troops, after the intervention of the British military in May 2000, when RUF rebels attempted to capture the capital.
And at this key moment, Freetown is indeed behaving like a liberated city where the residents have shown the power of radio, with a sea of radio aerials visible. They continue to wait expectantly, but patiently, for an announcement by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) on the definitive outcome to Tuesday's ballot.
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NEC earlier announced that it expected to be able to inform Sierra Leoneans of the outcome of the elections 72 hours after voting day. Nicol told allAfrica.com on Friday that he expected to be able to keep to that pledge, releasing the results "by close of business on Friday".
Sierra Leone's landmark polls, which should mark an end to the ten-year civil war that has claimed up to 200,000 lives, have been hailed at home and abroad. On Thursday, international observers from the Commonwealth, the European Union and the Carter Centre all largely endorsed the conduct of the elections.
Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji, the special representative of the UN secretary-general and head of Unamsil, declared himself satisfied with the progress, calling the poll "exemplary". But Adeniji warned that a successful election itself was only the start and that the international community must continue supporting Sierra Leone, as it faced the post-war challenges after the election.
