S Leone opposition unites after winning Parliament Katrina
Manson | Freetown, Sierra Leone 25 August 2007 07:17
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Sierra Leone's main opposition parties will campaign jointly against
Vice-President Solomon Berewa in a presidential run-off after taking control of
the West African country's Parliament, a party chief said on Friday.
The move puts All People's Congress (APC) leader Ernest Bai Koroma in position
to succeed outgoing President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, amid calls for change and
faster reconstruction after a 1991 to 2002 civil war.
Veteran politician Charles Margai, who defected from Kabbah's Sierra Leone
People's Party (SLPP) when it chose Berewa as candidate, said he would throw
his People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) behind Koroma on a joint
campaign tour.
Koroma won 44,3% of votes in the August 11 presidential election, short of the
55% needed to avoid a run-off, according to provisional results announced late
on Thursday.
Berewa won 38,3 % and Margai 13,9%.
PMDC endorsement will likely hand the northerner Koroma extra support in the
southern part of the country -- Margai's home and also the traditional
heartland of SLPP support.
The SLPP performed best in the south, failing to win a single parliamentary
seat in the western region around the capital, Freetown, and only a few in the
north, handing a parliamentary majority to Koroma's APC with 59 of the 112
seats.
'End tribalism'
"Let us put all tribalism, sectionalism, regionalism behind us. My desire to
unify this nation was one of the factors that urged me to appeal to the
membership of the PMDC to lend support to the APC. Never again will the
north/south-eastern divide raise its ugly head in Sierra Leone," Margai told
reporters on Friday.
Margai said his own party's constitution barred him from taking up any post in
an APC government, but said the PMDC would campaign jointly with the Koroma's
APC to defeat Berewa.
"I'm sure he has seen the writing on the wall ... He knows defeat is imminent.
The people of Sierra Leone have spoken that they want change," Margai said.
Koroma's spokesperson urged Berewa late on Thursday to concede and save the
impoverished country the expense of a second round.
But Berewa's camp rejected the call, insisting it would fight the run-off,
which should take place within two weeks of the final results announcement, due
on Saturday.
"We will absolutely win the presidential second round run-off," SLPP
spokesperson Victor Reider said.
"We feel great today. We think that the credit should go to a government that
is law-abiding, that has been able to engender a democratic process such that
the opposition has won the Parliament. That is to our credit," Reider said.
"What we have done in the last five years the APC failed to do in 24 years," he
said.
The APC ruled the former British colony for more than two decades before the
war, which was sparked in part by widespread official corruption and funded by
diamonds which rebels mined and sold to buy guns via neighbouring Liberia. --
Reuters
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