MOSCOW, November 17 (RIA Novosti) - Presidential and parliamentary elections are taking place on Saturday in the west African state of Sierra Leone, with the incumbent head of state President Ernest Bia Koroma among eight candidates contesting the post, AllAfrica reported.
The polls, which are a test of the country's emergence from years of instability and civil war, opened at 7 a.m. local time (11 a.m. Moscow time) and will close ten hours later. The elections are the first run by the country itself; the previous two democratic elections were run by the UN.
The main opposition candidate against Koroma, who has held the post since 2007, is retired Brigadier General Julius Maada Bio, leader of the Sierra Leone People's Party. Maada Bio was a military ruler from 1992-96, after deposing the previous military ruler Valentine Strasser.
The country is making a strong recovery from a civil war in the 1990's, in which the Revolutionary United Front and other groups, backed by Liberia and Col. Gaddafi's Libya, came close to toppling the government. Britain, the former colonial power, intervened to assist the government and has since provided military assistance to Freetown.
There has been heavy foreign investment recently in the country, particularly in its mining sector, which produces diamonds.
