A soccer star vying to become Liberia’s first post-war president vowed to work for peace as he voted on Tuesday in a presidential run-off that many hope will herald a new era after a quarter-century of coups and conflict.
One-time Fifa player of the year George Weah and former finance Minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf finished first and second, respectively, in the October 11 first round, which weeded out 20 other presidential candidates, including warlords and rebel leaders.
Weah, with little formal education or experience in politics, is running on his popularity born from soccer stardom that has kept him untainted by the country’s bloody wars. Johnson-Sirleaf boasts a Harvard University education and has a resume full of 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.”
If he wins, ”my first priority will be peace… bringing people together,” Weah said as he voted at a school in Monrovia.
Weah, dressed all in white and surrounded by a throng of reporters, then escorted his mother into a polling booth before driving off in a dark blue sedan.
Lines began forming outside polling stations just before voting began as scheduled at 8am GMT.
About 50 people waited outside a school in the capital early on Tuesday. The six polling workers there prayed together in a circle just before the voters began filing into a bare, concrete room.
Augustin Forkpa, the first in line, made the sign of the cross against his chest before dropping his ballot into a clear plastic container.
”We’re hoping for a better future; we’ve been suffering too long. And this time around, we hope this election will do us something better,” said Forkpa, a Finance Ministry worker who voted for Johnson-Sirleaf.
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 shelled 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, where chaotic jumbles of power lines hang low across the streets, has no power mains, relying almost exclusively on generators, candles and lanterns. Monrovia’s only functioning traffic light functions no more. Unemployment is at 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.
In the first round of the presidential vote, Weah took 29% to Johnson-Sirleaf’s 19%. A simple majority had been needed for outright victory.
About 1,3-million of Liberia’s three million people were registered to vote in Tuesday’s poll, which was being monitored by thousands of international and Liberian electoral observers.
Since the first round, Weah has gained 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. – Sapa-AP