Sierra Leone ruling party candidate has slim lead in election: partial results

An electoral worker counts the votes during a presidential run-off in Freetown. [Olivia Acland, Reuters]

The presidential candidate of Sierra Leone’s ruling party holds a slim lead over the opposition leader based on certified tallies seen by Reuters from nine of the 16 voting districts, though many opposition strongholds have not yet reported.

The largely peaceful election process has come as a relief for the country of 7 million people, who endured a civil war in the 1990s and whose economy was dragged down by an Ebola epidemic in 2014-15 and a global slump in commodity prices in 2015.