Freetown - Government and Politics

Government and Politics

The city of Freetown is one of Sierra Leone's six municipalities and is governed by a directly elected city council, headed by a mayor, in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor is responsible for the general management of the city. The mayor and members of the Freetown Municipaity are elected directly by the residents of Freetown in every four years.

The government of the Freetown Municipality has been dominated by All People's Congress (APC) since 2004. The APC won the city's mayorship and majority seats in the Freetown city council in both 2004 and 2008 local elections.

In November 2011, Freetown Mayor Herbert George-Williams was removed from office and replaced by counci member Alhaji Gibril Kanu as Acting Mayor; after Mayor Herbert George-Williams and eight others, including the Chief Administrator of the Freetown city council Bowenson Fredrick Philips; and the Freetown city counci Treasurer Sylvester Momoh Konnehi were arrested and indicted by the Sierra Leone Anti-Corruption Commissionon on twenty five counts on graft charges, ranging with conspiracy to commit corruption and misappropriation of public funds]. Mayor Herbert George-Williams was acquitted of seventeen of the nineteen charges against him; and was only convicted of two less serious charges by the Freetown High Court judge Jon Bosco Katutsi who gave him a fine.

Acting Mayor Alhaji Gibril Kanu, however, lost the APC nomination for the mayor of Freetown in the 2012 Mayoral elections with 56 votes to council member Sam Franklyn Bode Gibson, who won 106 in a landslide victory

In the national presidential and Parliamentary elections, Freetown is similar to swing states in American politics, primarily due to the city being so ethnically diverse and is home to a significant population of all of the country's ethnic groups; with no single ethnic group forming a majority of the population of the city.

Traditionally, the APC and the SLPP, two of the country's major political parties, have about equal supports in the city. Though, in the 2007 Sierra leone Presidential election, the APC candidate, then main opposition leader, Ernest Bai Koroma, won just over 60% of the votes in the Western Area Urban District, including the city of Freetown, where almost the entire District population reside.