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Long Name

Sierra Leone Peoples Party

Date Founded

Party Founder

Lamin Sankoh
Paramount Chief Julius Gulama
Milton Margai

Description

The Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) is one of the two major political parties in Sierra Leone, along with its main political rival the All People's Congress (APC). It has been the ruling party in Sierra Leone since April 4, 2018. The SLPP dominated Sierra Leone's politics from its foundation in 1951 to 1967, when it lost the 1967 parliamentary election to the APC, led by Siaka Stevens. Originally a centre-right conservative party, since 2012 it identifies as a social democratic party, with a centrist tendency. Now it is a centrist party.

The SLPP returned to power when its leader Ahmad Tejan Kabbah won the 1996 presidential election. The party was in power from 1996 to 2007, when it again lost to the APC, led by Ernest Bai Koroma, in the 2007 presidential election. SLPP returned to power in 2018 on the 4th of April when Julius Maada Bio was sworn in as the new President of Sierra Leone after winning the 2018 Sierra Leone presidential election. SLPP is overwhelmingly popular in Mende areas in south and eastern Sierra Leone (except in Kono District, a swing district), where the party regularly wins presidential, parliamentary and local elections by large margins. The SLPP has large minority support in the Western Area (including Freetown). The SLPP also has large minority support in Koinadugu District and Falaba District in the north of the country. The SLPP also has significant minority support in Kambia District in the north of the country.

Julius Maada Bio presidency (2018-present)
In 2018, Sierra Leone held a general election. The presidential election, in which neither candidate reached the required threshold of 55%, went to a second round of voting, in which Julius Maada Bio was elected with 51% of the vote against the candidate of then-ruling All People’s Congress (APC). On 4 April 2018, opposition candidate Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), was sworn in as Sierra Leone’s new president.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone_People%27s_Party