After days of demonstrations in the Liberian capital, the woman poised to become Africa’s first female President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has offered to team up with George Weah, the former world footballer of the year she defeated.
Johnson-Sirleaf has said she would like him to be minister of youth and sport in her next government. The move is seen as an effort to defuse tensions after allegations of vote rigging.
‘I’d like him to play an important role — I think working together we can do a lot,†said the bespectacled grandmother (66), tapping gold-ringed fingers stained with indelible ink from last week’s vote.
After all the votes were counted, the Harvard-educated Johnson-Sirleaf held a 20-point lead over Weah.
International observers said they did not observe a pattern of fraud, although they acknowledged minor irregularities.
Despite appeals for calm from Weah, several hundred protesters marched on the National Electoral Commission and the American embassy last Friday.
Johnson-Sirleaf has refused to be cowed. ‘We will be making a statement reaching out to them, saying the government will be one of inclusion … so I hope we can calm them down,†she said at her beachfront home.
Johnson-Sirleaf, whose Harvard training and previous work at the World Bank sometimes provoke envy in Liberia, has been careful to paint herself as a woman of the people. ‘I am the granddaughter of an illiterate market woman,†she said.
She has four children and her son, Jes, recalls that he and his brothers had to be taken to school in the boot of a neighbour’s estate car because they could not afford their own vehicle.
There were also darker times: Jes recalls being dragged from his bed at the point of a machine gun one night while his mother was in jail for speaking out against the military regime of Samuel Doe, the former president.
Johnson-Sirleaf’s maternal image — her sister hinted that she had married at 17 because she was pregnant — is a refreshing contrast to the horrors warlords have inflicted on a country where 80% of the population live below the poverty line.
‘We want to electrify the capital within six months,†Johnson-Sirleaf said with a wry grin as her house was plunged into darkness by a power cut.
‘We’ve got former managers of the Liberia Electricity Corporation who have been working with private companies.â€
The use of private investment to revitalise state services is an important part of her recovery plan but the woman known locally as the ‘Iron Lady†faces a formidable task.
While every member of the current legislature billed the government for a new car, little progress was made on social services. Slashed power cables dangle from crooked lampposts and raw sewage runs down Monrovia’s rubbish-filled main street.
There is no state-supplied electricity or running water, unemployment stands at 85% and thousands of disaffected former combatants roam the country.
Liberian schoolchildren huddle outside expatriate compounds to do their homework in the light that spills through the windows.
Johnson-Sirleaf wants rapid change. Addressing the tribal divisions that fuelled the conflict will be her first priority, she said. ‘Part of our challenge is not only to reconcile but to build a national unity that places Liberia first.â€
Liberia’s new president, has faced prison, exile and threats to her children and has made plenty of enemies. Her straight talking ways, and her castigation of the Doe regime as ‘idiots†led to spells in prison — the second time she was only freed after a massive outcry from American activists.
The ‘Iron Lady†also once refused to take a Senate seat she had won after declaring the election was rigged. Earlier she had resigned a post as a finance minister in protest at excessive government spending.
One point that continues to rankle with many Liberians is her early support for former warlord-turned-President Charles Taylor. He overthrew the despotic Doe but the country has yet to recover from the cruelties inflicted by his militias. However, Johnson-Sirleaf insists that once she learned of Taylor’s human rights abuses — he has since been indicted on 17 counts of crimes against humanity — she turned away from him, even running against him for the presidency in 1997.
‘I was Mr Taylor’s avowed enemy,†she said earlier in her presidential campaign. However, during the run-off against Weah, a more circumspect Johnson-Sirleaf announced her opposition to a ‘divisive†war crimes tribunal in Liberia.
Last week, the stereo in the house of the next president of Liberia was playing a hit song by Jean King. ‘Mr Big Stuff, who do you think you are?†sang King. ‘Mr Big Stuff, you’re never going to break my heart.†It was a fitting end to a campaign that pitted a technocrat politician with decades of experience against the populism of a champion footballer who failed to finish high school.