Presidential Election Day 2012!

Today is a great day for Sierra Leone. Citizens are exercising their right to participate in the electoral process in selecting the individual to serve as president for the next five years. It is my hope and prayer that the good people of Sierra Leone will continue to show the world how well they are progressing in their recovery efforts since the ending of the decades long conflict ten years ago. The article quoted below from Krista Larson for the Associated Press gives us an insight as to how things progressed in the election. [By KRISTA LARSON Associated Press FREETOWN, Sierra Leone November 17, 2012 (AP)] "Sierra Leoneans chose Saturday between keeping an incumbent president who has expanded health care and paved roads or electing an opposition candidate to lead this war-scarred nation still recovering a decade later despite its mineral riches. The election marked the third presidential vote since the West African nation's 11-year conflict ended in 2002, a brutal war during which rebels tortured victims and conscripted child soldiers. Voters said Saturday they wanted to demonstrate just how far Sierra Leone has come over the past decade by holding a transparent and peaceful vote. "We've been through a lot in the last 20 years. Now we're trying to move forward," said Mannah Kpukumu, 36, a civil servant waiting in a line that snaked near a giant cotton tree long before dawn. "We the young guys want employment and to be able to take care of our families." National election officials spread that message through posters afixed to tin shacks and traffic circles throughout the capital of Freetown: "The world is watching us. Let us don't disappoint them." Election workers slept overnight at polling stations and some voters began lining up at 2 a.m. in the congested seaside capital, with chests pressed up against the people in front of them. Those not yet old enough to vote weaved through the crowds selling plastic bags of cold water stacked in buckets on their heads. A decade after Sierra Leone's brutal civil war, voters on Saturday chose between an incumbent president who has provided new roads and free health care and a field of opposition candidates who decry the poverty and pace of economic recovery.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) CloseRichard Howitt, chief observer for the European Union election observation mission, said there were bound to be flaws in the process but that early reports indicated a high turnout Saturday. "What we see is a very happy atmosphere with people enthusiastic to vote," he said. "We are also pleased that it has been a peaceful process up to this moment and we hope that it will continue," he told reporters afterward.