S Leone's rivals claim lead
2007-09-10 12:51
Freetown - Parties of the two candidates in Sierra's Leone's presidential race both claimed an early lead on Monday as the poor and war-scarred West African country awaited official results from Saturday's vote.
According to partial unofficial results from more than a third of polling stations, opposition candidate Ernest Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) was ahead of his rival, outgoing Vice-President Solomon Berewa of the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).
Ransford Wright, co-ordinator of the Independent Network Radio (IRN) that grouped 20 radio stations broadcasting the unofficial results, said: "The trend so far is that the APC candidate is leading with about 54.5% while the SLPP has 45.5%."
Official results from the run-off round of the presidential poll were expected to start coming in by end of Monday at the very earliest.
Results 'showing good opportunity for us'
Christiana Thorpe, the head of the National Electoral Commission, said that tallying was ongoing, but could not say when exactly the poll organiser would release official results.
She said: "Tallying is underway and we will be able to tell you at the press conference this evening when the results will be out."
But officials of the two parties were confident each of their candidates was heading for the country's top job.
Alpha Kanu, APC spokesperson, said: "It's looking good. So far the results are showing a good opportunity for us, we are ahead of the SLPP."
Kanu, whose party had rejected the results from one southern Kailahun district, where it was unable to field monitors due to alleged intimidation, said that even given these disputed figures, "we are still doing better than the SLPP".
'We've done fairly well'
However, Victor Reider, spokesperson of the SLPP, said Berewa was doing well in many districts of the country, even making inroads in the opposition's northern strongholds.
Reider said: "We have done fairly well and this has put us in the lead against the APC."
He dismissed the results broadcast by IRN channels so far as "biased" and concentrating on areas, where the APC had scored well.
He said: "From our own collation, we are ahead of the APC. We are confident that we shall win the election and we shall surely emerge the victors."
About 2.6 million voters were registered to vote in only the second elections since the end of the country's brutal civil war six years ago and the first since some 17 500 United Nations peacekeepers were pulled out in 2005.
Sierra Leone gained international notoriety for the barbarity of its diamond-fuelled civil war, in which thousands had their limbs hacked off and 120 000 people were killed in a decade of fighting.