Two upstart Sierra Leone political parties said Wednesday they had filed complaints over this month’s elections after failing to make the cut for the second round of the presidential ballot. The National Grand Coalition (NGC) took 6.9 percent of votes in the March 7 elections to the presidency while the Coalition for Change (C4C) garnered 3.5 percent. The results left them far behind the two frontrunners, who go into a deciding round on March 27. The NGC — whose rise last year spurred talk of the emergence of a third party in national politics — is headed by Kandeh Yumkella, a former figure in the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), which topped the poll.
C4C is led by Samuel Sam-Sumana, a former vice-president of the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) party. “We at NGC are not satisfied with the presidential results,” NGC campaign manager Julius Spencer told AFP in the capital Freetown.
“NGC is currently consulting our legal team to challenge the results in court,” he added.
The party had earlier called for a recount of the votes in some polling stations but said it had not received any update on the outcome, though the National Election Commission (NEC) did several recounts before announcing results on Tuesday.
Full Article: Sierra Leone third parties complain after election setback.