Friday, 06/04/2018 16:47 (GMT+7)
The National Electoral Commission has announced that Mr. Julius Maada Bio, born in 1964, won the Sierra Leone presidential runoff.
Julius Maada Bio sworn in as President of Sierra Leone (Photo: AFP/VNA)
Accordingly, Mr. Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) won 51.8% of a total of over 2.5 million ballots cast in the March 31st vote, beating out the ruling All People’s Congress candidate Samura Kamara, who garnered 48.2 percent.
Dressed in traditional white robes, Maada Bio was sworn in just before midnight at a hotel in the capital Freetown. Mr. Bio thanked the people of Sierra Leone for taking the country in a "new direction".
“This is the dawn of a new era. The people of this great nation have voted to take a new direction,” Mr. Julius Maada Bio said in a speech following the short ceremony in which he made an appeal for national unity.
“We have only one country, Sierra Leone, and we are all one people.”
Mr. Bio succeeds President Ernest Bai Koroma, who is stepping down after serving a second five-year term.
The election was the fourth since Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war ended in 2002./.
Compiled by BTA