Congratulations Madame Ellen Johnson Sirleaf!

By ralph geeplay

This week the Liberian National Elections Commission [NEC] certified that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the presidential run off election in which the other party, the Congress for Democratic Change, or CDC boycotted the polls. 


Sirleaf’s re-election comes on the heels of a post war nation eager to put behind almost two decades long civil strive which ripped through the Mano River Union countries: Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and of course  Liberia. To cite Liberia’s history since the country’s foundation is to go into a repulsive paranoia: One party state for 133 years: a hegemony controlled principally by five percent of the population. The Rice Riots of 1979, a major cause for the country's decades long war. 

A brutal dictatorship that said it came to correct the vestiges of the True Whig Party (TWP) oligarchy in 1980, but then initiated from the get go the brutal public execution of prominent Liberian officials. The 1980 dud was itself a miscarriage and disappointment under the late dictator Samuel Doe. 

Doe’s misrule opened a window to a nasty war led by the impious Charles Taylor! The war saw almost 300,000 dead with more than a million displaced! The 2011 elections were meant to bury some of these vices and consolidate the peace however fragile since 2005, but the CDC in its wisdom was determined to ruin the party! And however it tried, the electoral politics on the continent is a playbook that is well rehearsed now…you could see through the tricks and thin veil of the CDC, nobody is buying their story and gimmick.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won re-election in the same year she won the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, putting her in the company of the select few.  She is the only other sitting president besides the ‘improbable’ Barrack Obama that has the credit, and the second African president besides the gentle Nelson Mandala. To be in the company of those two, you must have some sh.t going on! 

It was a good year for Liberia all things being equaled: Two Nobel laureates in a single year is a lifetime achievement! We probably won’t see that again in the next 100 years. The economy is growing, Liberia has the highest ratio of foreign direct investment to GDP in the world, with US$16 billion in investments since 2006, say analysts. But Sirleaf’s singular most important achievement was tackling Liberian domestic and foreign debts. 

The best track record there is anywhere in the world, canceling almost 4billion dollars worth of debt in less than four years is huge. Under Sirleaf’s leadership Liberia is enjoying renew international respectability, never seen in almost 30 years. But more than that, she's a big player in Liberia’s politics, and her reelection concludes an era for all the politicians of her generation. By the time she retires most of them would be beyond grey hair. Remember Sirleaf is 73; six more years makes her 80. This say analysts is the singular most important reason why Liberian male politicians were riled that she reneged on her earlier pledge to run for a single term. The Liberian presidency is a foregone conclusion for them now.

What surprises most observers is the fact, that even with most of them knowing they were not going to win the presidency, they refused to run for the Liberian Congress. For example, progressive icon Togbah Na Tipoteh, Dew Mason, and Walter Brumskine, could have easily won senatorial and representative posts, in a united opposition bid in the house and upper chambers, and their consolidated strengths would have troubled the Unity Party tremendously. In the legislature they still could have relaunch their political careers, and fuse the gains of the opposition, but Sirleaf has stolen the show. Being ambitious to a degree has its limits. Senators and representatives are those who hold the balance of power, the president comes to them and ask for favors. 

Because of their inaction, you have people today who have been elected to the Liberian Congress who don't know the importance of the positions they occupied, the New Democrat have opine. We need people on Capitol hill who strike fear in the presidency, statesmen and women, whose intellectual acumen and connections are as deep as the president. "Sirleaf look at the bunch in the legislature and laugh, because half of the time they don't know what they are doing," says a confidant to the president

On her way to the Executive Mansion for the second time Sirleaf demonstrated political deft. It is not a secret that she destroyed the CDC from within: "More than 250 persons claiming to be CDCians in the south beach community in Monrovia have pledged their support to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf second term bid,” New Dawn, 4th  November, 2011. “Ellen Captures CDCians in Bong - Vow to Campaign for Her,” The Informer 2^nd November 2011.

The Unity Party (UP) was vicious in its scheme. 

“There is one thing that separates Sirleaf from other Liberian politicians. She has convictions! She has that dogged determination to succeed once she makes up her mind,” says a political science professor at the University of Liberia." Since the 1985 presidential and legislative elections, the team that beat Samuel Doe (he rigged the elections), she believed would be the winning team. Having assembled the so-called Grand Coalition: Liberian Action Party, (LAP), the Unity Party (UP), and the Liberia Unification Party (LUP), her next move was to vigorously recruit the parties that were banned by Samuel Doe, namely the United Peoples Party (UPP), and the Liberia Peoples Party (LPP). That she did. Then, she assembled its young and brightest and reached out to its fathers like Professor Sawyer and the fiery Boimah Fahnbulleh. She left alone those who refused to come on board, like Professor Togbah Na Tipoteh and Dr. Baron Tarr. 

Then she went after the CDC and peeled away it’s young and brightest also. Her first move was as far back as 2008; yanking Milton Teahjay from the CDC and posting him as Sinoe County Superintendent, and Daniel Johnson whom she posted to River Gee as Superintendent also. She was,'t done yet, she grabbed Lenn Eugene Nagbe, the smart former secretary general of the CDC, who later became her deputy party campaign chair. Many other defections followed from other political parties as well, but the CDC was most dramatically affected. Sirleaf is a political monster---as in the song “Beautiful Monster” sang by the artist Ne-Yo:

All my life and the hereafter
I've never seen one like you
You're a knife sharp and deadly
And it's me that you cut into
But I don't mind in fact I like it
Though I'm terrified I’m turned

 On but scared of you

She has taken on Liberian male politicians and beaten them at their game. If anything she has governed as a conservative. Giving tax cuts to businesses and leading a smaller government as is evident in her many downsizing and streamlining of the country’s complex political bureaucracy; Liberia has banked 3million dollars a year doing that. Her cash based macro economic policies has received plundits both from the IMF and the World Bank. Six years ago, Liberia's annul budget was 80 million, today it is half a billion and where national reserves stood at 5million, they are pushing onward to 400million. Sirleaf has been skeptical to rapid change and has moved cautiously, mindful of President Tolbert’s experience and the catapult reverberations that attended 1980. 

She was part of that government. Demonstrating practicality, she brought back into government her fellow and former cabinet member Agriculture Minister Florence Chenoweth against public outcry. Chenoweth, was the agriculture minister during the Tolbert’s administration that witnessed the rice riots. 

In fact, she was a major player. If the Liberian opposition which harbors progressive and proletariat leanings must make inroads and consolidate their constituency ahead of future elections, they must state their liberal policies and be concise, that gives the Liberian electorate a choice to choose. They have a strong base of young people. As of 2006, Liberia has the highest population growth rate in the world (4.50% per annum). It is a large youthful population that has been sympathetic to the CDC. With half of the population under the age of 18, according to the Liberian Censor Bureau (LCB), the emergence of a young bright leader as head of the CDC still gives it potential; say for example, a Kofi Woods or Kwame Clement. 

"I still believe George Weah should run for a senatorial post to cement is knowledge about governance, the rule of law and tolerance towards people of different political persuasion," says a Monrovia resident.

Consequently, Sirleaf's mandate is complex, and made even more difficult because the CDC is a figurehead and its large youthful base is displeased, because its leaders have no clear objectives. They are stuck in a blame game. She has a chance to polish her legacy though, if she work really hard. The task is daunting, but she has said she is up to it, when you considered that only 17% of the population have access to adequate sanitation facilities. The civil war destroyed approximately 95% of the country's healthcare facilities according the LCB. A year ago, government expenditure on health care per capita wasUS$22, accounting for 10.6% of total GDP. In 2008, Liberia had only 1 doctor and 27 nurses per 100,000 people. But Sirleaf have said, she laid the ground work in her first term for continue success. Quoted in The New York Times upon her reelection, she said, “we are determined to make Liberia a post-conflict success story,” the same line she delivered to the United States Congress when she address its joint session five years ago.

Meanwhile, the United States, the United Nation’s Security Council, ECOWAS, the AU and essentially the international community, have all validated the re-election of Sirleaf, despite the CDC claims that the elections were fraudulent. “The legitimacy of her election is beyond doubt. Yet Tubman continues to reject the result, reflecting his frustration and the social discontent among those who have yet to benefit from the peace and growing prosperity of Johnson-Sirleaf’s first term” Said John Stremlau, vice-president in charge of peace programs at the Carter Centre in Atlanta, who observed the elections. He added “Failing to win on the strength of their personalities, Tubman and Weah attacked the process as fraudulent but without giving credible evidence. 

The presence of their party agents in virtually all polling stations, the acceptance of the results by those in their party who won legislative elections, and the validation of the process by hundreds of impartial election observers undermined the credibility of their claims. The decision to boycott seemed to reflect a party without principles and no plan to become a viable opposition with a hope for future victory.” Stremlau concluded. 

In her first public act since winning reelection, she has decorated Professor Amos Sawyer with the nation’s highest award, Grand Cordon in the Most Venerable Order of the Knighthood of the Pioneers. THISWEEK will analyze the president first public act and the importance of Sawyer’s decoration next week! Congratulations Madame President!