Ernest Bai Koroma : Ask Biography

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Ernest Bai Koroma (born October 2, 1953) is the fourth and current President of Sierra Leone. He was sworn in as President on 17 September 2007 at the State House in the capital Freetown, shortly after being declared the winner of a tense run-off in the 2007 Sierra Leone presidential election with 54.6% of the vote over the incumbent Vice President Solomon Berewa of the then ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) who gain 45.4% and conceded defeat . International and local observers assed the election as free, fair and credible . Koroma succeeded the outgoing president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah who was ineligible to run after serving the maximum two five year term limit.

Koroma is the leader of the ruling All People's Congress (APC) party and had previously served as the APC minority leader in the Parliament of Sierra Leone representing his home district of Bombali from 2002 until his election to the Presidency on September 17, 2007. He is a 1976 graduate of the Fourah Bay College with a degree in Business Management. Koroma is Sierra Leone's first Head of State from the Temne ethnic group. He speaks four languages: English, Krio, Temne, and Limba.

In 2002 then mostly unkown by the general population, Koroma ran for president in the 2002 Sierra Leone Presidential election. He received 22.3% of the vote as the APC presidential candidate, losing in a landslide to the incumbent President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), who received 70.1% and was very popular across the country after he was credited for ending the civil war. An insurance executive by professore, Koroma spent over twenty four years working in the private insurance industry before entering politics in 2001. From 1988 to 2002, Koroma was the Managing Director of the Reliance Insurance Trust Corporation (Ritcorp), one of the largest private insurance companies in Sierra Leone.

On September 4, 2008, Koroma became the first Head of State of Sierra Leone to declare his assets to the Sierra Leone Anti-corruption Commission and signed into law the country's new Anti-Corruption Bill of 2008 at the State House in Freetown. . Under the new law, it is compulsory for the president and other government officials to declare their assets and update them annually.

On April 16, 2009, Koroma was re-elected unopposed by the APC as the party's presidential candidate in the 2012 Sierra Leone presidential election at the APC National Delegates convention held in the northern city of Makeni.