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Assumes office in January
Jonathan, NDI applaud Liberians
Former soccer star George Weah has defeated Vice President Joseph Boakai to win Liberia’s presidential run-off election with 61.5 percent of the vote based on 98.1 percent of ballots cast, the election commission said on Thursday.
Weah will succeed incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf next month in what will be Liberia’s first democratic transition since 1944.
Weah supporters paraded through the streets of the capital Monrovia and honked car horns to celebrate the news.
Weah grew up in Clara Town slum in Monrovia and went on to star for AC Milan, Paris St Germain and Chelsea and become the only African to win FIFA World Player of the Year.
His rags to riches story helped him tap into dissatisfaction with Johnson Sirleaf’s 12-year tenure, which drew a line under years of civil war but was criticized for failing to root out elite corruption or persistent poverty.
Turnout for the second round stood at 56 percent, National Election Commission (NEC) Chairman Jerome Korkoyah told reporters in Monrovia.
Liberia is Africa’s oldest modern republic and was founded by freed U.S. slaves in 1847. Its last democratic transfer of power occurred in 1944 and was followed by a military coup in 1980 and a 14-year civil war that ended only in 2003.
The U.S.-based Carter Center said there were “notable improvements” in the handling of Tuesday’s vote from the first round in October, echoing positive assessments from other international observers.
Meanwhile, former President Goodluck Jonathan, who is co-leading the National Democratic Institute Election Observer group to the Liberian Presidential run-off election, and other leaders of the delegation have acclaimed the Boxing Day polls as peaceful, orderly and well-organized.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) made this known on Thursday in its preliminary statement issued in Monrovia on the Presidential run-off held December 26.
The delegation however stressed that official election results were not yet complete, and called on “Liberian political parties and candidates to cooperate in good faith with the National Elections Commission and for the results to be expeditiously released.”
Speaking of his experienced on the field on voting day, former President Jonathan said: “I am proud of Liberians, who have come from crisis to democracy and have shown themselves to be a model of peace and stability in the region.
Democracy goes beyond election day, and if Liberia succeeds, West Africa succeeds, Africa succeeds, and the world succeeds.”
Speaking in the same vein, Kosovo’s former President Atifete Jahjaga, said: “The NDI delegation would like to congratulate the people of
Liberia for exercising their right to vote and for making a historic step towards the consolidation of democracy in their country. It is my hope that the positive trends that we have observed during this election will be sustained and further improved during future elections.”
In noting that voting was peaceful, orderly and well-organized as executed by trained polling officials, the preliminary statement also highlighted “aspects of voter participation, election administration, women and youth participation and security.”
The NDI Liberia international election observer delegation included 36 political and civic leaders, elections experts and regional specialists from 18 countries across Africa, Europe and North America.
