Sunday, October 30, 2005

The Liberian elections

The Globalist praises the Liberian general elections which were held recently. Despite difficult conditions and little democratic history (these being probably the first truly free and open multiparty elections in the country's history), some 75% of registered voters cast a ballot. Voters conducted themselves well, despite long lines and bad weather.

The two leading presidential candidates, who will face each other in a Nov. 8 runoff, are former soccer star George Weah and former UN official and veteran opposition leader Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who hopes to become Africa's first popularly female elected head of state.

Johnson-Sirleaf is clearly the most qualified candidate and Weah the candidate most able to unify the once-divided country. So hopefully, Liberia will win either way.

The up-side is that none of the many former warlords who were running in the presidential election will make it to the runoff. Not only will they thus not win, but since they were so soundly trounced, one can hope that they will accept the result of the election and recognize the legitimacy of the next administration.

The Globalist also pointed out the important role played by UNAMIL, the UN mission in Liberia.

Moreover, most agree that UNMIL was crucial to the elections' success in providing an enabling environment and guaranteeing security through its 15,000 peacekeepers, currently the largest UN peace-keeping contingent in the world, it noted.

In addition, the UN provided critical expertise as well as logistical and financial support. A total of $18 million of UN funding went towards organizing the elections.

After 15 years of nearly non-stop and extremely savage war (with a brief interruption for a now-defunct dictatorship) and huge populations of citizens having fled the country, Liberians are ready for their state to become a normal country again. Let's hope these elections are a first step.

1 Comments:

At 8:18 AM, Blogger BRE said...

It's good that you are staying on top of this based upon your keen interest in and knowledge about Liberia. All of us should be interested in seeing the country move forward out of the nightmare that Charles Taylor and his cronies created down there. The U.S. government and citizens should take an especially active role in the re-building of the country for both historical and strategic reasons (in my opinion, anyways).

One thing that caught my eye in The Gloabalist article referenced in your post is the high cost of arranging the elections in Liberia. Not the actual dollar amount of USD $18 million but the cost-per-voter amount of USD $13. The same is true for the UN-managed voter registration and polling setups for the re-re-scheduled national elections in the DRC for 2006.

Where does all of this money go and who gets the biggest slice of the pie? Local or regional African-owned-and-operated companies capable of providing administrative and support services to the UN and to the people of Liberia? I would doubt that very much.

Anybody got answers to that question?

 

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