( Newsvine )) Sierra Leone's battle-weary citizens chose an opposition leader as their next president, voting against the party that ushered the country out of a devastating war in 2002 and for the promise of less corruption and more jobs.
Ernest Bai Koroma was sworn in Monday hours after election officials declared him the winner of a tense run-off vote with 55 percent of 1.7 million ballots cast, compared with 45 percent for the ruling party candidate, Vice President Solomon Berewa .
"I inherited a bankrupt, war-torn and failing state. Today, I am handing over to you a fully stable and functional state," outgoing president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah told Koroma in front of a crowd of cheering and clapping supporters.
Thousands of Koroma's supporters wearing red T-shirts and hats clogged the streets of the capital city of Freetown, singing and dancing through a heavy midday downpour.
Although ruling party officials had earlier decried the outcome on local radio, Berewa said he called Koroma with congratulations soon after the release of the results.
Both parties had complained of localized fraud and misconduct at some polling stations, but international observers said the poll went off generally smoothly and without major problems that would have invalidated the outcome.
The election, the first presidential vote since U.N. peacekeepers withdrew two years ago, was seen as a test of whether the West African country has emerged from the chaos wrought by a decade-long war. Tens of thousands of civilians died in the fighting, and rebels hacked off the limbs of countless others.
Peace was re-established in diamond-rich Sierra Leone with the help of U.N. forces in 2002, but most of its residents remain poor and unemployed, and corruption is rampant.