By Ken Afor
Tuesday’s general election in Liberia has approximately 2.4 million eligible voters and President George Weah is running for re-election after serving for the first six years amid allegations of corruption and persistent economic hardship.
The 57-year-old former soccer star who was sworn in as president in January 2018, claims he needs more time to complete his campaign pledge to fix the West African nation’s crumbling infrastructure, institutions, and economy.
If reelected, he also promised to build more roads.
Weah is competing against 19 other presidential candidates after winning the country’s first democratic transfer of power in more than 70 years in 2017. The winning candidate must obtain 50% of the total votes cast plus at least one additional vote in order to avoid a runoff.
After a parade through the city of Monrovia on Sunday evening, Weah declared the end of his campaign and declared his first term to have been successful despite many difficulties.
The nation endowed with iron ore is still struggling to recover from two devastating civil wars between 1989 and 2003, which killed over 250,000 people, and an Ebola epidemic from 2013 to 2016, which claimed thousands of lives.
“I’m proud of the record of achievement in a very difficult period. We were able to do much with less resources and solve many structural problems,” Weah told cheering supporters.
For failing to do enough to combat corruption during his first term in office, he has drawn fire from the opposition and Liberia’s international allies. He dismissed his chief of staff as well as two other top officials last year after the US punished them for corruption.
He emphasized the appointment of impartial members to the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission in his final speech, among other measures taken to combat corruption.
“In our second term, we plan to increase efforts on our war on corruption,” he said.
Former Vice President Joseph Boakai, 78, who was defeated in a runoff in 2017, is Weah’s main rival.
Boakai has run on a platform of what he calls the necessity of rescuing Liberia from what he claims is Weah’s administration’s mismanagement.
Additionally, voters will choose half of the 30 members of the senate as well as the 73 seats in the lower house.
Although the election campaigning has been largely peaceful, occasionally fights have broken out between supporters of opposing parties, leading the United Nations, UN, rights office to express concern about election-related violence after two people were killed in September.
Fighting broke out between opposing supporters on Sunday as the capital’s elections came to a close.
