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Elections will be held on Tuesday 10 October in Liberia, a West African country roughly the size of Denmark and inhabited by 5 million people. We are voting to elect the new president and to renew the parliament, but attention is focused above all on the presidential elections, and in particular on the candidacy for a second term of George Weah, the current president.
Weah is a very successful former footballer, he played for many years at Milan after growing up in one of the poorest and most violent slums in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Also by virtue of his past as a footballer, he is very popular in the country and in 2017 he was elected with over 60 percent of the votes in the elections in which for the first time in the history of the country a democratically elected leader took a step back, giving up power without fighting or trying to change the Constitution. The previous president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, had won the Nobel Peace Prize for restoring peace to the country after 14 years of civil war, and she did not run again due to the two-term limit imposed by the Constitution.
Weah’s election in 2017 was accompanied by high hopes for change in a country that had long been considered one of the most dangerous and unstable in West Africa. And after all, Weah, founder of the populist Congress for Democratic Change party, had been broad in his promises to his electorate in various areas. He had said that he would eliminate corruption, make education more accessible, improve infrastructure and strengthen the economy. He had also promised to maintain peace and promote a process of historic reconciliation, through the establishment of a special tribunal to ascertain responsibility for the crimes suffered by thousands of people during the civil war.
In today’s elections, Weah’s main opponent, who is 57 years old, is the same as in the 2017 elections: Joseph Boakai, 78 years old, from the center-right Unity Party. In reality, Weah’s challengers are 19 in total, of which only two are women, but Boakai is the one most likely to win. Boakai based his electoral campaign on some of the failures of Weah’s mandate, whose six-year presidency is a bit midway.
Weah has indeed succeeded in expanding access to public education, although not in improving its quality, and has maintained current conditions of peace. During his tenure, a large number of public works were undertaken, including the construction of roads, a coastal highway and two new hospitals, as well as the renovation of public housing, health facilities and markets across the country.
But Weah did not obtain the same good results in other areas, on which he had insisted a lot during his electoral campaign: corruption, the economy and the investigation of crimes committed during the civil war. During the election campaign, Boakai leveraged precisely these issues to try to regain consensus against Weah.
In addition to not having followed through on his promise to establish a tribunal for civil war crimes, Weah does not appear to have solved the problem of corruption, which is still widespread among politicians and public officials, on the contrary. In recent years there have been at least two major scandals, which have sparked strong protests. In 2018, some containers containing 100 million newly printed Liberian dollars (about half a million euros) disappeared from a port in the country: over 30 former officials of the Liberian central bank were indicted. In 2022, the United States imposed sanctions on three prominent Liberian officials over corruption issues: a minister in Weah’s government, an attorney general, and the CEO of the Liberian National Ports Authority. The three resigned, but no legal proceedings were brought against them in Liberia.
Finally, Liberia’s economic conditions have not improved. Weah had promised to “transform the lives of all Liberian people”, but unemployment and inflation have increased. Boakai based his electoral campaign on the slogan “Rescue”, blaming Weah for having aggravated a series of structural problems in the country and attempting to present himself as a credible and reliable alternative.
During the election campaign there were also episodes of violence, especially in some areas of the country. Last month there were three deaths.
2.4 million people will vote in today’s elections. To be elected in the first round in Liberia, a candidate must obtain at least 50 percent of the votes. If this doesn’t happen, a run-off is scheduled two weeks after the first round: that’s what is expected to happen.
Liberia was founded as a colony of the United States in 1822 by the American Colonization Society (ACS), a private philanthropic organization that supported the return of blacks, former slaves or free, to their home continent: it remained a colony until 1847 , when it gained independence from the ACS.
2023-10-10 10:47:31
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