Stroll down memory lane: 2007 & 2012 elections...

With less than 24 hours to go until polling stations open in Sierra Leone, I thought I would take us down election memory lane, looking at the two elections I experienced in Sierra Leone in 2007 and 2012.

2007 Presidential election…

11 August 2007: the Presidential elections took place – 7 contenders, 2.6 million people registered to vote, half of which were below 35 years old. The polling stations opened late due to delays of ballot paper deliveries, likely due to heavy rainfall the night before. People lined up as early as 5 am to vast their vote. By evening, in the neighbourhood I lived in at the time, there was already a lot of cheering as their votes had been counted and they knew which party was in the lead at their voting station. Elsewhere in the city there were some disturbances, but nothing serious.

16 August 2007: 34.3% of the 6171 polling stations reported their results. There was a lot of fluctuation in who was taking the lead.

21 August 2007: 93% of the polling stations reported their results, with APC ahead at 44% and SLL following at 38%.

25 August 2007: 14 days after the election, the results of the 1,839,208 votes were announced at 10:00 am as follows: APC 44.34%, SLPP 38.28% and PMDC 13.89% Since no single party won more than 55% of the votes in the first-round, a run-off election was scheduled between the top two candidates.

In the lead up to the run-off elections, more campaigning took place. There was some unrest during this in-between stage, both in Freetown and up-country, in particular Kono, Kenema and Bo districts. Nothing major, however, both parties did agree to hold a peace rally to demonstrate their commitment to a peaceful run-off.

6 September 2007: Peace rally held

8 September 2007: Run-off election was held between APC and SLPP candidates.

11 September 2007: 22.2% of 4793 polling stations processed their results, with preliminary results as follows: APC 64% and SLPP 36%. Counting continued.

17 September 2007: At 10:00 am NEC announced that Ernest Bai Koroma won the presidential run-off. With 54.6% of the 1,740,058 votes, and the SLPP party receiving 45.4% of the votes.

2012 Presidential election…

17 November 2012: Presidential elections were held. Interestingly, on that day there was a vehicle ban in place – this has been demanded again by the Sierra Leone Police for the 2018 elections, however, the ban is being contested in High Court today, the day before the elections.

19 November 2012: 75% of the results from polling stations (9492 total) have been processed.

21 November 2012: There were rumours going around that the results would be announced, however, that didn’t happen and 90% of the votes had been processed. At 8:00 pm there was an announcement but it was NEC’s response to various allegations by the two political parties.

23 November 2012: At 18:25 hours the official presidential election results were announced: APC 58.7%, SLPP 37.4%, PMDC 1.3%, CDP 1% and there were a few other parties holding less than 1% of the votes. Shortly after this announcement President Ernest Bai Koroma delivered his swearing-in speech at State House.

I enjoyed a stroll down election memory lane. If you are interested, look at blog posts from August and September 2007 and November 2012:
http://sandralako.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
http://sandralako.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

http://sandralako.blogspot.com/2012/11/

We have less than 24 hours to go before the polling stations open.

Sierra Leone: vote wisely and keep the peace.

#sierraleonevotes #presidentialelection #sierraleoneelection #electionsinsierraleone #sierraleone #undivided #keepthepeace