At a recent political rally in Sierra Leone’s southern city of Bo, one of the placards, held high by a youthful activist, read: ‘Failure is Death!’ The rhetoric is not entirely hysterical. Elections in countries just-emerged from civil wars are as much a test of democracy as they are about how peaceful such nations have become. Add a history of electoral violence, state institutions that are still fragile, and a combustible regional environment, and you begin to understand why voting on August 11 is of importance way beyond the immediate outcome.
