Sierra Leone Opposition Unites for Runoff Vote

Solomon Berewa said on Monday two main opposition candidates have formed an alliance to try to beat him.

The two main opposition candidates in Sierra Leone's presidential polls are poised to join forces against the country's vice president, Solomon Berewa, in an expected runoff, party officials said on Monday.

The main opposition candidate, Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) party, is leading after a first round of polls just over a week ago, with 44 percent of the vote, while Berewa has 38 percent, with around four fifths of votes counted.

If no candidate wins 55 percent, the election will go to a run-off, probably to be held in September.

Media reported Charles Margai of the People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), currently in third place with 15 percent and seen as a potential kingmaker, pledged on Monday to back Koroma in the anticipated second round of balloting.

Margai was not immediately available for comment. Officials from his party said they were in talks with Koroma's APC, although a final agreement had yet to be reached.

"The PMDC is in the process of consultations. They are leading towards throwing our support behind the APC but we don't foreclose the possibility of further consultations," PMDC secretary general Ansu Lansana told Reuters.

APC officials welcomed the expected tie-up.

"Our party welcomes Charles Margai's decision to cross over. His party is also another progressive party that wants change," APC secretary general Victor Bockarie Foh told Reuters.

The elections are the first in the former British colony since U.N. peacekeepers left two years ago and are seen as a test of Sierra Leone's recovery from a 1991-2002 civil war.

Outgoing President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah is stepping down as required by the constitution but Berewa, his vice president, is the candidate for his Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

"Margai's decision to ally with the APC has not hampered my party's hope to win the presidential election if there is a second round," Berewa, who has said he is disappointed with the results so far, told Reuters.

"It is the democratic right for the PMDC candidate to make his choice as to whatever party he would want his party to ally with," he said in an interview in the capital Freetown.

Many ordinary Sierra Leoneans say they are tired of the SLPP's failure to tackle corruption, which analysts and diplomats say means that badly-needed aid is being squandered. Sierra Leone is the highest recipient of British aid per capita.

"The SLPP has had a golden opportunity to develop this country but they have not lived up to the expectations of the people and that has been reflected in the polls," the PMDC's Lansana said.

The PMDC is a breakaway group founded by Margai in 2006 which split from the SLPP after he lost out on the presidential nomination.