{"id":407414,"date":"2018-03-07T10:59:17","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T10:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=407414"},"modified":"2018-03-07T10:59:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T10:59:17","slug":"sierra-leone-votes-new-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2018\/03\/sierra-leone-votes-new-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Leone votes for new President"},"content":{"rendered":"
Voting is under way in Sierra Leone, where more than three million people are eligible to choose a new president, parliament and local councillors.<\/p>\n
In the capital, Freetown, long queues could be seen at polling stations even before dawn.<\/p>\n
President Ernest Bai Koroma is stepping down after serving two five-year terms.<\/p>\n
His chosen successor, Samura Kamara, is being challenged by 15 other candidates – many of them promising to tackle endemic corruption and poverty.<\/p>\n
Mr Kamara of the All Peoples Congress (APC) is one of three frontrunners – the others are Julius Maada Bio of the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and former UN diplomat Kandeh Yumkella of the newly-formed National Grand Coalition (NGC).<\/p>\n
One of the greatest challenges for the new leader will be to reconstruct a healthcare system following the huge Ebola outbreak in 2014 that killed nearly 4,000 people.<\/p>\n
Only 200 doctors serve a country of seven million people.<\/p>\n