Weah’s moment
Liberia wins respect for peaceful elections
Liberian electoral authorities last week announced that the country has completed the process, including a twocandidate runoff, for electing a president, George Weah, to succeed current elected President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Americans should commend and congratulate the some 4.6 million Liberians on having elected a new president in a war-free process. Ms. Johnson Sirleaf came to power in 2006 without extraordinary violence, but the period preceding her time had been characterized by some of the worst events experienced in African countries in recent years. This epoch included the appearance on the stage of President Charles McArthur Taylor, currently imprisoned in the United Kingdom as a result of a conviction for war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a neighboring country in whose conflicts Mr. Taylor had also been active.
The elections themselves this time included many candidates for president, including Prince Yormie Johnson, who is most memorable for having tortured to death on videotape former Liberian leader and Master Sgt. Samuel Doe in 1990. Another candidate was a former mistress of newly elected president Weah, whom she says fathered her third child. Mr. Weah’s vice presidential running mate was an ex-wife of the incarcerated Mr. Taylor. And Americans found the 2016 list of their presidential candidates sometimes bizarre.
Ms. Johnson Sirleaf is considered to have done a decent job as president. She was particularly adept at rounding up international funding to meet Liberia’s various crises. She got $4.7 billion in foreign debt forgiven. She summoned through U.S. President Barack Obama 3,000 American troops to help Liberia deal with the 2014 Ebola crisis. Most of all, she upheld the respect of the presidency and presided over a relative absence of violence in Liberian public life, a welcome departure from the conflicts that had characterized the preceding 25 years since indigenous Liberians overthrew the Americo-Liberian class, which had ruled the country since it had been returned there from slavery in the United States starting in 1822.
Mr. Weah, 51, a former international soccer star, although clearly popular, having won 61.5 percent of the vote, lacks qualifications to be president. The situation he inherits will also not be a rose garden. Liberia does have resources, including iron ore and rubber. It also has a contingent of Liberian-Americans and friends who watch out for it in the United States. On the other hand, its problems include poverty and youth unemployment, and the country’s variegated tribal composition, with some 20 ethnic groups, always threatens to transform what might be normal political disputes into instant bloody warfare.
Given Liberia’s background, its long-standing close relationship with the United States and its original launching as a nation by Americans, as opposed to a potpourri of tribal groups, it would be difficult for the United States not to accept some responsibility for its ongoing situation, even many years after ostensible independence in 1847.
The elections appear to be a good development. We should wish Mr. Weah well and be ready to provide help, hoping he won’t need it.