Democratic Transition Follows Liberia’s Election

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

After almost three-quarters of a century, something new out of Liberia: a democratic political transition.

An African country founded by American Blacks in the 19th century, it had not had a smooth transfer of power from one elected president to another since 1944.

In fact, this was the first ever peaceful transfer of power in the country through universal suffrage.

On Dec. 26, George Weah, the former international soccer star, a man with little previous political experience, beat Joseph Boakai who had been Liberia’s vice-president for 12 years.

Boakai served under outgoing president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and darling of the international development community. 

She had herself defeated Weah in the presidential election run-off in 2005, and won a second term in 2011 against Winston Tubman, whose vice-presidential running mate was Weah.

In 2017, Weah and Boakai were the top two finishers of 20 candidates that contested the first round of balloting back on Oct. 10. 

Weah had come first with 38.4 per cent of the vote, compared with the 28.8 per cent won by second-place Boakai. As neither gained 50 per cent, a run-off became necessary.

Scheduled for Nov. 7, it took place after much delay, as some of the defeated candidates cried foul and insisted the election had been plagued by irregularities. 

This time, Weah won 61.5 per cent of the vote against Boakai’s 38.5 per cent. Voter turnout was low, with around 56 percent of registered voters, as many Liberians stayed home on the day after Christmas.

Weah, who was raised in a poor part of Liberia’s capital Monrovia, starred at major European soccer clubs in France, Italy and England. 

And now he will be running Liberia, a country which endured a brutal civil war for 17 years, started by Charles Taylor on Christmas Eve in 1989. The 14-year civil war left 250,000 dead and the nation’s infrastructure destroyed.

Taylor was eventually forced out amid international pressure following his indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in neighbouring Sierra Leone. He is currently serving a 50-year jail term in a British prison following his conviction. 

Weah’s vice-president will be Jewel Howard Taylor, the warlord’s ex-wife. But such is politics in this long-suffering country.

She had caused a stir early in the election campaign when she told reporters that although her ex-husband was no longer involved in Liberian politics, he still had promises that needed to be kept. She called for putting her husband’s agenda “back on the table.”

Rumors had abounded that Charles Taylor was issuing directives to Weah’s campaign from his jail cell during the first round. Weah admitted receiving at least one call from the incarcerated war criminal.

Having secured a little more than 38 per cent of the vote in the first round, Weah obviously had to make a lot of political deals with some of the other 18 first-round candidates in order to win. 

He even sought the support of a former warlord, Prince Johnson, who was taped torturing and killing former president Samuel Kayan Doe in 1990. 

Weah has his work cut out for him, in a country that, despite Johnson Sirleaf’s efforts, is still struggling with acute poverty, high unemployment, corruption and a health system recovering from the 2014 Ebola epidemic, which killed more people in Liberia than anywhere else. 

Compared to this, being a soccer star is a cakewalk.