Runoff expected in Liberia’s presidential race

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf faced a tough challenge to retain power as voters went to the polls Tuesday, with many observers predicting she would be forced into a runoff election against her strongest opponent.

Johnson-Sirleaf, who last week was one of three women awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, probably will remain pitted against candidate Winston Tubman, a former United Nations official, after Tuesday’s votes are counted, analysts said. Results are expected this month, with a runoff to follow if necessary.

Despite her international plaudits for helping solidify Liberia’s fragile peace, Johnson-Sirleaf’s popularity has waned among voters hungry for a better life, including electricity, running water and jobs. With 80% of the population unable to find work, the problems of unemployment and poverty have threatened to derail her.

But Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated former World Bank economist who negotiated the cancellation of $5 billion in debt and led the effort to build schools, hospitals and roads, urged voters to let her complete the job she started when she became Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state in 2005, the first elections after the nation’s 14-year civil war ended in 2003. It takes more than six years to rebuild a country shattered by war, she has said.

Her Unity Party campaign posters showed her wearing a pilot’s cap and read: “When the plane e’en land [hasn’t landed] yet don’t change the pilots.”

Tubman, however, has called Johnson-Sirleaf a warmonger who has not done enough to fight corruption. Also Harvard-educated, Tubman is a member of Liberia’s political aristocracy, nephew of the late William Tubman, the country’s longest-serving president, from 1944 to 1971.

His choice of running mate, popular former soccer star George Weah, was made in part to garner support from young voters. Weah lost the 2005 presidential race to Johnson-Sirleaf in a runoff election after no candidate obtained a simple majority in the initial balloting.

Tuesday’s vote was seen as a key test of the country’s fragile democracy, peace and stability. It was the first election the country has organized since the end of the civil war; the 2005 vote was coordinated by the United Nations.

Johnson-Sirleaf faces 15 challengers, including a former warlord named Prince Johnson, notorious for a 1990 video showing him sipping beer while his men sliced the ears off then-President Samuel Doe before killing him.

She has been criticized for initially supporting former President Charles Taylor when he started a revolution against Doe’s government in 1989. She has since apologized, but in 2009 the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission named her as someone who should be barred from public office for initially supporting him. Taylor is being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone on war crimes charges in connection with that conflict.

Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee endorsed Johnson-Sirleaf at a campaign rally Sunday, saying she had changed the country significantly in six years. Johnson-Sirleaf and Gbowee shared the Nobel Peace Prize last week with Yemeni activist Tawakul Karman.

About 8,000 U.N. peacekeepers were stationed around the country to monitor Tuesday’s election.

“So far, so good,” former Nigerian President Yakubu Gowon, who is leading the monitoring team of the U.S.-based Carter Center, told Reuters news agency. “The reports that we are getting up to now shows that everything is going smoothly. “

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

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