They call her Ma Ellen, a fond nickname for Africa’s most powerful woman. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was the continent’s first woman president. She took on a country ripped apart by 14 years of civil war. When she took office in 2005 Liberia’s schools, roads and hospitals were in disrepair, the justice system was in tatters and many of the country’s young people were skilled in just one thing: holding a gun.
Since then, Johnson-Sirleaf has made impressive strides in transforming Liberia.
She erased nearly $5-billion in debilitating foreign debt in just three years. Foreign investment has returned. The annual government budget has risen sixfold from $80-million to $516-million.
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize on October 7 confirmed her heroic international status. But what is less clear is whether her success has trickled down to all of her people.
Liberians went to the polls on Tuesday and provisional results from a local media association, the Liberia Media Centre, showed Johnson-Sirleaf ahead of her main rival Winston Tubman. The centre reported that Johnson-Sirleaf had won just over 96 000 votes, to his nearly 80 000, of a total 220 000 votes counted. Voting on Tuesday passed peacefully in Monrovia. Observer groups said they had received no reports of trouble in the country of four million people, Reuters reported.
In Sugar Hill, a slum on the edge of one of Monrovia’s bustling markets, a group of jobless young men sat lounging on crumbling brick walls. Many spend their days drinking 8PM, a strong Liberian gin, and smoking drugs.
“For young men like me she hasn’t done anything,” declared 32-year-old Prince Flomo, a former combatant. “We put her there as president because we thought she was going to make things all right.” He supported Sirleaf in 2005, but would not vote for her re-election in the country’s second post-war general election on Tuesday.
Another young man declared: “Ma Ellen waived debt, that’s true. She did well. But where’s the development? Where’s the jobs?”
Thousands of young men who fought during the 1989-1996 war still roam the streets “crooking” to make a living. Many came out of the disarmament process without the skills needed to find work. Some followed the lure of money across the border to fight in the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire.
Many who voted for Johnson-Sirleaf in 2005 are now backing Tubman’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC).
Tubman, like Johnson-Sirleaf, was educated at Harvard and is the nephew of Liberia’s longest-serving president, William Tubman. His running mate is George Weah, the world-renowned football player who ran a close second to Johnson-Sirleaf in 2005.
The announcement that Johnson-Sirleaf had won the Nobel Peace Prize had little effect on the thousands of opposition supporters at the CDC’s final election rally on Friday.
“Muyan, muyan, muyan,” they chanted — a battle cry for their beloved footballer, meaning “move forward”.
But among opposition leaders, the prize has sparked resentment and recriminations. “It is undeserved,” said Tubman. “It is a political interference in our country’s politics.”
One young voter said: “We thank God our Pa now come because our Ma fooled us.” —