Soccer great Weah ahead in Liberia, run-off looms

By Katharine Houreld

MONROVIA (Reuters) – Liberia’s presidential elections
appeared headed for a second round as the latest tally on
Sunday from last week’s vote showed soccer great George Weah’s
lead was still too narrow to win outright.

With results in from 84 percent of polling stations across
the war-ravaged West African country, former FIFA World Player
of the Year Weah led the field of 22 candidates with 30 percent
of the vote.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former finance minister and World
Bank economist, was in second place with 19.6 percent of the
vote. She would become Africa’s first elected female president
if she won.

Any candidate must gain 50 percent plus one vote to win
outright in the first round, otherwise a run off will be held
in early November between the two leaders.

National Elections Commission chief Frances Johnson-Morris,
announcing the figures at a news conference, declined to
comment on whether a second round was now inevitable. An
official announcement is due by Tuesday.

LONG JOURNEYS

With Liberia’s infrastructure in tatters following a brutal
14-year civil war which killed almost a quarter of a million
people, many voters will face long journeys if they have to
cast their ballots again.

“A second round is a bad thing. It would be complicated,”
said Claude Nimley, a security guard who traveled for three
days to vote in Monrovia for Weah.

“I’m afraid many people won’t make it a second time. I
thought we would win outright!” said Nimley, who was waiting
anxiously for the final election result.

Tuesday’s presidential and parliamentary polls were the
first in Liberia since the war ended in 2003 after former
president and warlord Charles Taylor went into exile in
Nigeria.

Taylor, whose army included child soldiers high on drugs
wielding grenade launchers and Kalashnikovs, is wanted for war
crimes by a U.N.-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone. He is
regarded as the mastermind of several West African conflicts.

International election observers, diplomats and United
Nations officials have praised the peaceful conduct of an
election broadly judged so far to have been free and fair.

Africa’s oldest independent republic, Liberia was founded
by freed American slaves in 1847. It enjoyed relatively
stability for well over a century becoming a center for rubber
and iron ore production.