I. OVERVIEW
2006 is a decisive year for Liberia and with it West Africa. Just as Liberia once dragged its neighbours into a horrific war, it could now - with good policy and strong donor support - become an anchor for stability in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire.
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's inauguration as president on 16 January 2006 completes a credible election process, the first of the country's four major peacebuilding challenges. Economic governance and security sector reform, the second and third challenges, are being addressed and must remain priorities: getting them right will give Liberia an excellent chance at long-term success. But inadequate follow-through on the Governance and Economic Management Assistance Plan (GEMAP) and the training of the new army will endanger the entire reconstruction and peacebuilding process.
Donors imposed the intrusive GEMAP regime on the transitional government because of their acute concern at the lack of accountability for reconstruction funds: accepting GEMAP is a heavy price for any government to pay, and donors have as a result some further responsibilities of their own. They must now put money on the table, including funding slowed or frozen in 2005, and channel as much of this as possible through government ministries. The urgent need is to repair decimated infrastructure as soon as possible: there is no electricity, piped water, telephone lines, or sewage system, and many roads are often or always impassable. There also needs to be established quickly an IMF Staff Monitoring Program and an accelerated path for forgiving the country's $2.9 billion debt.
The fourth challenge, judicial reform, needs much more attention. Very little has yet been done: the new government will have to find creative solutions, and donors will need to provide significant funding.
II. THE ELECTIONS
A. THE FIRST ROUND
The run-up to the 11 October 2005 presidential and legislative elections went smoothly.(1) Civic education was surprisingly broad, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) did a good job of registering voters, parties and candidates, and there was little obvious vote-buying. This was all far better than most Liberians and outside observers had dared hope at the beginning of the year, when many expected Varney Sherman, the presidential candidate of the LAP party of transitional government chairman Gyude Bryant, to buy his way at least into the runoff.(2)
There was a last-minute hitch: the successful appeal to the Supreme Court by three presidential candidates whom the NEC had barred from running on 13 August 2005. When it looked as if the election would have to be delayed so new ballots could be printed, former Nigerian President Abubakar managed to persuade all three to stand down. Liberians universally believed they were paid to do so.
On 8 October, football star George Weah, Roland Massaquoi of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Party (NPP), and Sherman held final rallies that were remarkably orderly and good-natured, in contrast to the unruly marches and demonstrations of the past year.(3) Supporters crossed paths as they returned home from the rallies and exchanged casual hellos.
Campaigning was banned on the next two days, which passed quietly. On election day, voters began queuing around midnight; by daybreak most lines were hundreds of metres long, and citizens waited good naturedly, some for up to twelve hours. In the toughest neighbourhoods of Monrovia, Paynesville and Red Light, crowd control problems had been resolved by the time a Crisis Group researcher visited.
Election night was surprisingly quiet. The transitional government announced that polls would remain open until midnight, instead of 6 pm, so all could vote. The presidential count began immediately,(4) and results trickled in slowly. The next day Monrovia radio station Star Radio began announcing partial returns from individual polling stations as called in by observers or poll agents. Residents all over the capital could be seen listening attentively and tallying up the figures.
The top two vote getters,(5) who qualified for the second round, were George Weah (275,265 and 28.3 per cent) and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (192,326 and 19.8 per cent).(6)
(1) Crisis Group Africa Report N°98, Liberia's Elections: Necessary but not Sufficient, 7 September 2005. (2) Liberia's Constitution stipulates that if no candidate receives a majority in the first round of the presidential vote, a runoff is held between the top two candidates.
(3) It was even more surprising given that there had been large inter-ethnic riots as well as a violent rampage after the Liberian football team lost to Senegal in the 12 months before the election. (4) Ray Kennedy, director of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL)'s electoral division, read Crisis Group a passage from one observer's report, describing party representatives asleep on the floor and in chairs of the classroom as NEC officials read out the vote on ballots. Crisis Group interview, Monrovia, 12 October 2005.
(5) The results for other candidates were: Charles Brumskine, 135,093 (13.9 per cent); Winston Tubman, 89,623 (9.2 per cent); Varney Sherman, 76,403 (7.8 per cent); Roland Massaquoi, 40,361 (4.1 per cent); Joseph Korto, 31,814 (3.3 per cent); Alhaji Kromah, 27,141 (2.8 per cent); Togba-Nah Tipoteh, 22,766 (2.3 per cent); William "Shad" Tubman, 15,115 (1.6 per cent); John Morlu, 12,068 (1.2 per cent); Nathaniel Barnes, 9,325 (1.0 per cent); and others, 46,490 (4.8 per cent). A total of 973,790 valid ballots and 38,883 invalid ballots were cast, a 74.9 per cent turnout.
(6) Johnson-Sirleaf, an economist with a Master's degree in public administration from Harvard, was Minister of Finance in 1972-73 and has had a long international career, including as Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa. She is a former member of the International Crisis Group's Board of Trustees.
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