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Abstract
When the National
Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone announced
that Ernest Bai Koroma and his party, the All
People’s Congress, had been elected to replace the
incumbent Sierra Leone People’s Party government,
Sierra Leone joined a growing number of African
nations to have experienced a peaceful turnover of
power from one popularly elected government to
another. Though the electoral tallies were not
without their critics, the overwhelming sentiment
both within Sierra Leone and without was that the
2007 elections marked a positive turning point in
the country’s political history. Using newly
released census data and election results, we
analyze the 2007 elections to see just how
paradigm-breaking these elections were. We find
that the social cleavages, and most notably ethnic
cleavages pitting the Mende versus the Temne, that
marked preceding elections were evident in 2007.
These most recent elections were not, however, as
some SLPP supporters have claimed, more divisive
in terms of ethnicity than elections past. What
changed between 2002 and 2007 was not an increase
in “tribal animosities” or a demographic shift but
rather a change in who the heterogeneous and
relatively cosmopolitan voters of Freetown felt
should lead the country for the next five
years.
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