Election delay deepens divisions in Liberia
AN EXTRAORDINARY delay in electing Liberia’s new leader amid claims of electoral fraud is entrenching existing divides between the candidates and outgoing President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, as voters wait nervously for a resolution.
The Supreme Court will decide today the fate of a presidential runoff vote originally scheduled for November 7, either by setting a new date or prolonging it indefinitely until a legal complaint by the opposition Liberty Party is resolved.
The runoff, to be contested by former international footballer George Weah for the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) against the incumbent Vice-President Joseph Boakai for the governing Unity Party, is therefore on ice – and no one knows for how long.
The Liberty Party’s Charles Brumskine came third in the first round of the presidential vote on October 10, and immediately alleged that fraud and irregularities had tainted the results, claims which were backed soon afterwards by Boakai but downplayed by Weah.
“The country is more divided than ever,” said Rodney Sieh, editor of investigative newspaper FrontPage Africa. “Supporters of Weah feel Brumskine and others are prolonging the process while others feel the law should take its course.”
The National Elections Commission has already made clear the original date does not look possible to meet, in the words of its chairman Jerome Korkoya, after ballot paper shipments to the provinces were recalled and training of polling agents halted at the Supreme Court’s request.
The country is no stranger to election disputes: The results of its two post-civil war presidential votes in 2005 and 2011 were both contested by Weah’s CDC, which ultimately conceded defeat after going through a complaints process.
This time, however, the CDC accused Boakai of “trying to steal the elections from the Liberian people after over 40 years in power,” in a statement e-mailed to journalists on October 31, after the vice-president announced he would back Brumskine’s actions.
In parallel, Boakai and Brumskine have accused Sirleaf of interfering in the elections by meeting polling officials at her residence ahead of the vote.
A hint of Boakai’s true motive in supporting the fraud allegations, critics say, was clear in a leaked early draft of a speech given on October 23. The vice-president was poised to go public with a weekslong complaint by his supporters: that Sirleaf backs Weah, not the man who served alongside her in government for 12 years.
“Individuals close to her and operating under her instructions are in fact giving multiple forms of support to our main opponent in the presidential race, the Coalition for Democratic Change,” according to the draft.
Brumskine and Sirleaf have unresolved grievances of their own. He has called for the electoral commission to be sacked even as she gave it her full backing, and this week he accused Sirleaf of having a hand in starting the nation’s 19892003 civil war, in which a quarter of a million people died. — AFP.