Sierra Leone’s president is re-elected in the first round

Inside the opposition headquarters people suddenly hit the floor and crawled for safety; outside, the security forces kept firing. Samura Kamara, the main opposition candidate in the presidential election the day before, circulated photos of holes in a door. “Live bullets fired at my private office,” he wrote. A woman was found dead under a window with a fist-sized hole in it. The police insisted they had merely fired tear gas to disperse a crowd in the street.

After the violence came the result. On June 27th the electoral commission declared Julius Maada Bio, the incumbent, the winner with 56% of the votes. This squeaked him over the 55% threshold needed to avoid a run-off. Mr Bio was hurriedly sworn in within an hour. Mr Kamara called the outcome “a frontal attack on our fledgling democracy”.