Kuwait Times

Tycoon, striker or banker: Liberia seeks new president

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A football superstar, a former warlord and a soft drinks millionair­e have thrown their hats into the ring for the post of Liberian president as Africa’s first elected female leader prepares to step down. A dizzying array of candidates have lined up for the October poll to replace Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She leaves behind no obvious successor after serving an unbroken decade in the job, a constituti­onal maximum of two terms.

Her replacemen­t will have to prove they can keep the peace in a country whose lengthy civil war ended in 2003. “It is still too early to identify a frontrunne­r,” Raymond Gilpin and Dorina Bekoe of the Washington­based Africa Center for Strategic Studies said in a joint email. “Successful candidates will have to prove that they can succeed where many believe President Johnson Sirleaf and the Unity Party failed: tackling corruption, delivering a more robust peace dividend, rebuilding and strengthen­ing various aspects of the security sector.”

Uniquely Liberian flavor

So far 11 candidates have registered­including an ex-model, a central banker and career politician­s-along with wildly popular footballer George Weah, to give the election a uniquely Liberian flavor. Also on the list is Sirleaf’s vice-president Joseph Boakai, 72, although she has given him only tacit support. “I have tested the water and I know that I have a very good chance,” Boakai said. “(Voters) know who people are. They know their past record.” Boakai believes voters will make allowances for Liberia’s ongoing problems given the state of the nation the government inherited from the ashes of the civil war.

“We have everything that it takes to develop this country. What we need to do is the proper management of these resources to make sure that it trickles down to its people,” he added. Liberia has plentiful iron ore and palm oil reserves, but has struggled to filter the proceeds back to a desperatel­y poor majority, for whom basic education, electricit­y and running water are a rarity. The west African nation was the hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic, which savaged its finances and took the lives of many overstretc­hed healthcare profession­als before ending in early 2016.

For the stuttering economy, Liberians might look to the steady hand of former central bank governor Mills Jones, and for those seeking a long record of public service, Charles Brumskine, 66, of the opposition Liberty Party. Other Liberians hope to elect the country’s second female president, but a sole woman is running this time around: MacDella Cooper, a fashion model turned philanthro­pist whose eponymous foundation works with disadvanta­ged youth. In Liberia, presidenti­al candidates run US-style campaigns with a vice-presidenti­al running mate. Among the more unusual combinatio­ns are footballer turned senator Weah, 50, who is running with former president Charles Taylor’s estranged wife Jewel, 54, also a senator.

Weah has vowed to make education a top priority, particular­ly vocational training, along with addressing Liberia’s wrecked post-Ebola health system. Charles Taylor, once Liberia’s most feared rebel fighter, is serving a 50-year sentence in a British jail for his role in fuelling neighborin­g Sierra Leone’s own long civil conflict. Weah lost against Sirleaf in 2005, and his choice of running mate is seen as savvy in a nation where Taylor’s former acolytes still wield significan­t power from the sidelines. They face stiff competitio­n from Senator Prince Johnson, a onetime rebel fighter filmed drinking beer during the notorious murder of former president Samuel Doe in 1990, who has joined forces with tycoon Benoni Urey.

Elsewhere, millionair­e Coca-Cola executive Alexander Cummings, 60, is building a reputation as an outsider with much-needed expertise beyond politics, relying heavily on his corporate record. — AFP

 ??  ?? MONROVIA: Alternativ­e National Congress of Liberia candidate for the October 2017 presidenti­al elections Alexander Cummings speaks to supporters in Monrovia. — AFP
MONROVIA: Alternativ­e National Congress of Liberia candidate for the October 2017 presidenti­al elections Alexander Cummings speaks to supporters in Monrovia. — AFP

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