Accra, Ghana — "By the constitution of Sierra Leone, I do hereby declare Dr Ahmad Tejan Kabbah as duly elected president." With those words Sunday from Walter Nicol, chairman of the national electoral commission, the incumbent leader of Sierra Leone became the official winner of a second five-year term.
With more than 70 percent of the votes, Kabbah, 70, finished comfortably ahead of his nearest rival, Ernest Bai Koroma, candidate of the former ruling All People's Party. He needed more than 55 percent of the vote to win the first round outright and avoid a run-off,which analysts said might have worked against him.
Kabbah's Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) also swept to victory in the parliamentary elections, winning 83 of the 112 seats, compared with 27 for Koroma's party. The remaining two seats were taken by the Peace and Liberation Party, which was set up by the former military ruler, Johnny Paul Koroma, who appeared to attract votes from the armed forces.
The only woman candidate, Zainab Hawa Bangura from the Movement of Progress, made a lamentable showing. Bangura was best known as an anti-corruption activist who lobbied against military rule. Her critics accused her of courting the wrong constituency, saying that she had concentrated her efforts on the international community instead of voters back home in Sierra Leone.
Earlier, the electoral commissioner, Nicol, explained the delay in the announcement of the final results, which had been expected by close of business on Friday. He said election employees had been "agitating" for their pay, and journalists were made to understand that some angry election staff had even prevented NEC officials from leaving their offices.
Shortly after he was declared the winner, Kabbah was sworn in as president. His jubilant supporters took to the streets of the capital, Freetown, to celebrate their landslide success, honking their horns, singing and dancing.
The SLPP followers had, along with many other Sierra Leoneans, spent the entire week glued to the radio, listening to election results and hoping their candidate would come out ahead.
There was disappointment for the former rebels, under the banner of the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP), led by Alimamy Pallo Bangura. He took a mere 1.7 percent of the vote, failing to make any impact in the presidential tally. As a party, the RUFP also polled badly, finishing a poor fourth without winning a single parliamentary seat. RUFP hopes of becoming a political force in Sierra Leone seem to have been dashed, at least for the next five years.
During the civil war, the rebels, along with other militia members, made a sport of chopping off the limbs of people they felt did not support them. It appears that it may be too soon after the war for their victims, hundreds of amputees and thousands of other civilians who queued in the hot sun to vote, to trust the former rebels with political posts.
The response of the RUFP to their defeat at the polls is likely to remain a concern to Sierra Leoneans, who want the fragile peace they are enjoying to hold.
The RUFP includes amongst its ranks hundreds of former fighters who are unschooled, unskilled, unemployed and angry that their founder, Foday Sankoh, who launched the civil war in 1991, is jailed on murder charges and was ineligible to run.
There were some opposition allegations of intimidation and fraud against Kabbah's SLPP, but last Tuesday's polls were widely seen as a vote to close the book on Sierra Leone's devastating ten-year conflict and end the bloodshed.
Despite some shortcomings and logistical 'hiccups,' the elections were endorsed as largely peaceful by international observers from the Organisation of African Unity, the Economic Community of West African States, and the Commonwealth, as well as from the European Union and the Carter Centre.
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But the challenges facing Kabbah and the nation are monumental. Sierra Leone currently benefits from the assistance and security provided by 17,500 United Nations peacekeepers, who are part of the Unamsil, the UN mission stationed all over the country and the largest such operation in the world.
The British military also stepped in to help, in 2000, when the rebels were poised to seize the capital. Britain retrained the Sierra Leonean armed forces, and the continued, discreet British presence in the country is added assurance of international goodwill for Sierra Leone.
However, some observers have sounded a warning bell, saying the culture of dependency on the UN and foreign aid is a habit Sierra Leone's leaders will have to kick, as they start the process of rebuilding and reconciliation.
