Sierra Leone’s President Re-Elected, Barely Avoiding a Runoff

President Julius Maada Bio won re-election in the West African nation of Sierra Leone on Tuesday, a result rejected by his main opponent and questioned by some observers who cited a lack of transparency in the vote tallying.

Mr. Bio took 56 percent of the vote, according to the country’s electoral commission, just clearing the threshold of 55 percent required to avoid the runoff that most analysts had predicted. Samura Kamara, the leading opposition candidate, finished second with 41 percent of the vote.

Mr. Bio was quickly sworn in — just an hour after the official results were announced. His supporters thronged the streets of Freetown, the capital, wearing green T-shirts, his party’s color, and chanting his name.

Mr. Kamara, in a tweet, called the results “NOT credible” and “a frontal attack on our fledgling democracy,” but did not say how he might respond.

The election, held on Saturday, was a rematch of the 2018 contest, in which Mr. Bio defeated Mr. Kamara, an economist and former government minister, by a tight margin.

But Sierra Leone finds itself in a more dire situation than five years ago, grappling with record levels of inflation and unemployment and some of the highest levels of food insecurity in West Africa.

Mr. Bio, 59, called on Sierra Leoneans to give him five more years to pursue an education initiative that has sent an additional one million children to school. But he has also been accused of overseeing violent repression of protests, including last summer when more than two dozen people died in demonstrations against rising prices.

Mr. Bio is a former military officer who took part in two coups during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s. He briefly ruled the country in 1996 as the head of a military junta, but handed power to an elected president months later.

Claiming victory on Tuesday, Mr. Bio wrote on Twitter: “Though our tongues, tribes and political persuasions might differ, we are united in our desire to see the land that we love, Sierra Leone, prosper.”

Voter turnout appeared to be high at around 77 percent, according to the electoral commission. Over 3.3 million voters had registered to vote in the nation of 8.4 million, most of them under age 35.

“Participation is usually very high because young people want change,” said Ishmael Beah, a Sierra Leonean writer who is critical of Mr. Bio’s government. “That is, until they realize that nothing is going to change.”

The voting on Saturday was mostly peaceful, but tensions rose on Sunday when security forces surrounded the headquarters of Mr. Kamara’s party, the All People’s Congress, as supporters were celebrating local results. (The vote on Saturday was also for local and parliamentary officials.)

The police fired tear gas and a woman was shot dead. Party officials have accused security forces of firing live rounds, which the head of the Sierra Leonean police has denied.

On Monday, both Mr. Kamara’s and Mr. Bio’s parties had predicted a victory, raising fears of further tensions when the final results were released. As of Tuesday evening, most of Sierra Leone remained calm.

But international election observers have voiced concerns about the lack of transparency during the counting process.

National Election Watch, an independent monitoring body, had said earlier on Tuesday that no candidate would win 55 percent of the vote in the first round, based on the data it had collected and which it said matched provisional results released by the country’s electoral commission on Monday.

According to the official results, however, more than 1.56 million people voted for Mr. Bio — slightly above the 55 percent threshold.

Election observers from the Carter Center noted several voting irregularities, including broken seals and open ballot boxes that should have been closed, said Cameron R. Hume, a former U.S. ambassador and the head of the center’s observation mission.

“The voting went pretty well — people showed up, they wanted to vote and they wanted their voice to be heard,” Mr. Hume said in a telephone interview from Freetown.

But that couldn’t be said of the count of ballots, Mr. Hume added. “There’s a lot of questions left on the table.”

Joseph Johnson contributed reporting from Freetown, Sierra Leone.