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FREETOWN - Campaigning has started in Sierra Leone for a presidential election run-off on September 8 between main opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma and Solomon Berewa of the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).
No candidate gained the 55 per cent needed to win office outright in the opening round of the polls on Aug. 11, the first since United Nations peacekeepers left the former British colony two years ago following a 1991-2002 civil war.
Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) took 44.3 per cent and Berewa won 38.3 per cent, according to the official final results announced on Saturday.
Veteran politician Charles Margai of the People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), regarded as a potential kingmaker in the second round, won 13.9 per cent.
Margai, who defected from the SLPP when it chose Berewa as its presidential candidate, has said he will back Koroma on a joint campaign tour for the second round.
"We are working together shoulder to shoulder, for peace, unity and development for all," APC spokesman Victor Foh told a joint APC-PMDC news conference.
Margai's endorsement will likely hand the northerner Koroma extra support in the southern part of the country - Margai's home and the traditional heartland of SLPP support.
But with many of Margai's followers former SLPP supporters, it is not certain all of them will back Koroma, meaning the run-off with Berewa is likely to be a closely-fought contest.
"With such an overwhelming majority for the APC, traditional SLPP supporters who voted PMDC in the first round may feel obliged to return to the SLPP for the second round in order to achieve an ethnic balance of power," said Nana Adu Ampofo, an Africa analyst with research group Global Insight.
The elections are seen as a test of Sierra Leone's recovery from more than a decade of civil war, one of modern Africa's most brutal conflicts which shocked the world with images of drugged-up child soldiers and mutilated civilians.
"It is widely acknowledged that the results are credible and that the elections have been conducted in a manner that is free, fair and transparent," National Electoral Commission (NEC) president Christiana Thorpe said as she announced the results.
But the APC accused the ruling party of fraud, particularly in the east of the country, an ethnically-mixed diamond mining area which saw some of the heaviest fighting during the war.
Foh said a paramount chief in the region - traditional leaders who are generally strong ruling party supporters - had used mercenaries to intimidate voters in one district.
"The paramount chief from Kurubonla crossed the border into Guinea and brought back armed men who fired shots around the polling stations," Foh said.
"We have no confidence in the judiciary."
A NEC spokeswoman said police were investigating the allegations of shooting on polling day.
The commission has also rejected the contents of four ballot boxes after accusations of fraud in the eastern Kailahun district near the border with Liberia, where rebel fighters first attacked in 1991.
The APC also performed strongly in a parliamentary election held alongside the presidential vote. The party took 59 of 112 seats in parliament, compared to 43 for the SLPP and 10 for the PMDC, final official results showed.
- REUTERS
