Washington, DC — Elections in Liberia "were free and fair and the most successful in Liberia's history," a State Department official said Tuesday. "Any opposition allegations of isolated irregularities do not affect the credibility of the outcome," said the official, who cannot be named according to State Department briefing policies.
George Weah, the international soccer star who lost to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by a margin of nearly 20% in the country's run-off balloting on November 8, returned to Liberia on Sunday reiterating his claim that he is the country's rightful leader.
"I can tell you I am the president of this country," he told Star Radio in Monrovia on arrival, adding: "So if the world wants to change that, then we need to go on the table and discuss that." He said he had taken his complaint to President John Kufuor and to South African President Thabo Mbeki and later said he had also received "wise advice as usual" from Nelson Mandela.
That evening, according to the IRIN news service, Weah told hundreds of supporters outside his party's headquarters that Sirleaf's inauguration would be blocked. "One cannot have an inauguration in January, when the case we are pursuing is not resolved," he said. "There cannot be peace without justice." On Monday, Weah supporters clashed with police in Monrovia's streets, but Weah denied that his Congress for Democratic Change, or CDC, was responsible for the violence.
On Tuesday Weah backers again waged a public relations offensive. "George is the elected 23rd president of Liberia, and we will not allow Madam Sirleaf to be inaugurated based on fraudulent results," CDC secretary-general, Lenn Eugene Nagbe, and former deputy information minister, Milton Teahjay, told a radio talk show in Monrovia, according to the German news agency DPA. Nagbe, who is Minister of Posts and Telecommunications in the current power-sharing government, is quoted as saying that the CDC would ensure the inauguration does not take place as planned, "even if we will have to file ten lawsuits or injunctions to the Supreme Court".
In the first round of voting on October 11 in a contest that included 22 presidential candidates, Weah won 28.3% of the votes to Sirleaf's 19.8%. Many projections showed him running ahead as the run-off proceeded, but Sirleaf campaigned energetically across the country and closed the gap, surprising prognosticators by polling 59.4% to Weah's 40.6% of the total.
The American government is urging Weah and others "to avoid any action that threatens to undermine the democratic transition," the State department official said, noting that Sirleaf is being welcomed to Washington by a number of senior Bush administration officials.
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The Liberian president-elect's schedule this week includes meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow. Last Friday, she met with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley at the White House and with World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. In New York on Monday, Sirleaf was received by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, under whom she served as Assistant Secretary General and head of the Africa Bureau at the UN Development Programme from 1992 to 1997.
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