Liberia votes - woman or soccer star?

Dunja Speiser

No 47/2005, SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Abstract: Liberia held free and fair elections for the first time in its history on October 11. About 1.35 million registered voters were called to elect both chambers of parliament and a new president, replacing transitional institutions set up two years ago. Neither of the two leading presidential candidates - former soccer star George Weah and veteran politician Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf - gained an absolute majority, so a runoff will be held on November 8. Democratic elections would have been impossible without the work of the currently sixteen-thousand-strong United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), which has restored public order after fourteen years of war. The election process was organized - very successfully and for the first time independently - by an externally assisted electoral commission. A welcome milestone has been passed, but the stabilization process is far from complete. If it is to continue successfully, the international community will have to remain committed and involved for several more years. (SWP comments / SWP)

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/255980/1/2005C47.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:swpcom:472005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().