Weah stars in Liberian presidential run-off
A former world soccer star faces off against a Harvard-educated woman in a heated brains-versus-brawn run-off tomorrow to decide Liberia’s first post-war president after a quarter century of coups and war.
One-time FIFA player of the year George Weah and former Finance Minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won first and second plae respectively in the October 11 first round, which weeded out 20 other candidates, including warlords and rebel leaders. In the first round, Weah took 29% of the vote to Johnson-Sirleaf’s 19%. A simple majority had been needed for outright victory.
Weah, with little formal education or experience in politics, is running on a popularity born from soccer stardom that’s kept him untainted by the country’s bloody wars. Johnson-Sirleaf boasts an Ivy League education and top postings in government and the United Nations, but is handicapped by her association with past failed governments.
“It’s going to be a tough battle,” said Liberian journalist Raymond Zarbay. “Whoever wins will have to take Liberia from where it is. Can either one do it? That’s the million dollar question.”
Founded by freed American slaves in the mid-1800s, Africa’s first republic was once among its most prosperous, bolstered by fields of diamonds and a vast ocean of tropical forests rich in hardwood timber and rubber.
A coup in 1980, which saw Cabinet ministers stripped, tied to poles and shot on the beach, heralded a grim era of strife that ended in 2003 when warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor stepped down as advancing rebels shelling the capital.
Despite the peace that came with the war’s end, little has improved.
Burned-out, bullet-splattered buildings still dot the low skyline, along with others sprouting weeds that were never completed.
The capital Monrovia, where chaotic jumbles of power lines hang low across the streets, has no mains power, relying almost exclusively on generators, candles and lanterns. Monrovia’s only traffic light functions no more.
Unemployment is 80%.
Today, with Taylor watching from exile in Nigeria, Liberia’s fragile peace is overseen by a 15,000-strong UN force backing the transitional, caretaker government of Gyude Bryant.
Peacekeepers have made their presence on the streets more visible in the run-up to tomorrow’s vote. Yesterday, scores manned tented checkpoints in sky-blue baseball caps, surrounded by sandbags and white armoured personnel carriers.
A brief week of campaigning wrapped up last night with thousands of supporters from rival camps rallying at their respective headquarters and filling main roads, waving arms in the air and cheering.
Since the first round, Weah has gotten backing from warlords who ran in the October vote, including Sekou Conneh, who headed the main rebel group which forced Taylor from power, and 1990s faction leader Alhaji Kromah.
Yesterday, Weah flooded his personal station, Clar TV, named after his wife, with ads trumping his soccer stardom.
“Life is a game, choose the best player. George Manneh Weah for president,” said one. On billboards, Weah promised “Liberia shall rise again.”
Weah has appealed to Liberia’s poor youth, but not to all.
“He jumps from hitting a ball to come here and be president? No. He’s not educated. He’ll take Liberia backward,” said 32-year-old Larry Thomas, a Johnson-Sirleaf supporter selling sweets on a Monrovia street. “Ellen is qualified, educated, outspoken, intellectual. Only she can take Liberia forward.”
Across the street at a jewellery shop, several Weah supporters spoke out.
“Weah is the only one who can unify Liberia. He can talk to the fighters, everybody,” said shopkeeper Anthony Mulbah, 39. “Ellen has already worked in government. She never did anything good, never brought any development.”
Next door at a shoe shop, 32-year-old Ibrahim Yaffa said this: “We just pray that whoever wins, they bring us some peace.”
