Liberians vote for president
LIBERIANS headed to the polls yesterday to elect a new president in a contest set to complete the country’s first democratic transition of power in more than 70 years.
After a campaign hailed for a vibrant and violence-free debate, the small West African nation’s 2.18 million registered voters queed to cast their ballots between 8am and 6pm.
With Africa’s first female elected head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, stepping aside after her maximum two terms, Liberians will choose from a crowded field of 20 candidates, although just one of them is a woman.
“The future of the country is in your hands – no one is entitled to your vote, not because of party, ethnicity, religion or tribal affili Sirleaf, a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel peace prize, said in a speech on Monday.
Among the frontrunners are footballing icon George Weah, incumbent vice-president Joseph Boakai, longtime opposition figure Charles Brumskine and former CocaCola executive Alexander Cummings.
Also waiting in the wings with potentially significant vote shares are telecoms tycoon Benoni Urey and former Central Bank of Liberia governor Mills Jones.
The first official results are expected within 48 hours. If no candidate wins 50% of the vote, then a run-off of the top two contenders will be held on November 7 – an outcome analysts say is a near certainty.
Sirleaf’s Unity Party swept the vote in 2005 and 2011, results that Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) contested in court.
“The third-place candidate is also very important in this round of elections because you somehow become the kingmaker,” a Liberian political analyst at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Ibrahim Al-Bakri Nyei, noted, placing his bet on Cummings’s slick, upstart campaign to cause damage to the two main groupings.
Regardless of the result of yesterday’s election, the international community is keen to see Liberia’s history of coups, assassinations and exiled dictators shift to a more stable footing after 12 years of peace under Sirleaf. — AFP