Exactly one month ago, torrential rains and strong winds brought down the legendary Cotton Tree, a 400-year-old, 70-meter-old tree that towered over Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. It was a national tragedy: the tree, with a silhouette that adorns banknotes and stamps, was the symbol of the nation since in 1972 it welcomed under its branches the prayers of the founders of the city, former slaves in America.
In Sierra Leone, where the belief in spirits, black magic and supernatural elements is widespread among the population of any social or cultural condition, the fall of the legendary tree was read by many inhabitants as a bad omen for the re-election wishes of the President, Julius Maada Bio, who had placed an election banner next to the roots of the Cotton Tree.
Yesterday, spirits on the sidelines, 3.3 million citizens of flesh and blood were called to the polls to decide whether the bad omen or the arithmetic logic is stronger: Bio is the favorite to get a second mandate, but to avoid a second again he will have to get at least 55% of the votes. Despite the fact that he will have a dozen rivals in front of him, Bio only fears for his re-election against the leader of the opposition, Samura Kamara, with great support in the north. However, Bio is convinced of victory, and more so with the pacts of recent months. The current president, who won Kamara by a very narrow margin in the 2018 elections, has joined forces with the third contender in the last election, Kandeh Yumkella, who is remarkably popular in the north of the country, the heel of ‘Achilles de Bio, which has its big bag of voters in the southern half.
The division between north and south, straddling ethnic differences, is the backbone of the elections in Sierra Leone. Historically, origin and ethnicity have been decisive in choosing the winner, since the People’s Party of Sierra Leone (PPSL), currently in power, is the majority in South Mendé (in the last elections Bio he got 87% of the southern votes), while the north is a stronghold of the Temné, loyal to the Congress of All Peoples (CTP), who voted en masse (78%) for Kamara five years ago.
Although it is predictable that in yesterday’s appointment the regional vote differences were so disparate, in recent months Bio has made a large deployment of campaign visits to the northern regions to try to reduce the gap.
There will be another decisive issue: youth. As in most African elections, young people will once again be a differentiating factor, as 60% of Sierra Leoneans registered to vote are under 24 years old.
And their patience due to the lack of work is running out: last year there were around thirty deaths after the protests over the cost of living that filled the country’s streets.
The Sierra Leonean writer Ishmael Beah integrated this discontent in his article this week in T . “We are voting for a new president, but the candidates are difficult to distinguish. The current president feigns a sham of success, even if the economy disintegrates and, meanwhile, the opposition promises to fix everything without a clear plan.”
Among the supporters of the main opposition party, the perception is that the Government will do everything possible to stay in power and the elections will not be clean. At the end of last year, the spokesman for the opposition CTP, Abdul Kargbo, even cast doubt on the new registration and verification of votes, asserting that “they had been deliberately designed to create an uneven playing field to deprive a certain section of the electorate of their rights at the expense of the party”.
Attempts to set fire to coexistence have no effect for now. A survey carried out in March by the Institute for a Reform Government indicated that 75% of Sierra Leonean citizens consider the elections credible. The analysis also shows signs of change in a country that 20 years ago ended a civil war that between 1991 and 2002 caused 70,000 deaths and displaced 2.6 million people. Two decades later, insecurity is the ninth concern of society (chosen by only 1.6% of respondents), while infrastructure, access to water and rising prices occupied the first three positions.
