Monrovia — Two years after the end of more than a decade of conflict in Liberia, the country's first openly contested election campaign has begun. The race for president includes 22 candidates, the best known of whom are George Weah, 36, a soccer superstar who was the World Football Federation's player of the year in 1995, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 66, a former United Nations official who was the leading opposition candidate in the last election -- which was won by former rebel leader Charles Taylor, who threatened to continue his brutal war unless elected.
Weah's star power has attracted a media spotlight, along with a front-runner designation in some reports. But Sirleaf has leveraged her extensive international contacts and her support from women to garner considerable backing at home and abroad. In addition, vigorous campaign efforts are being mounted by a number of other contenders, including Charles Brumskine, a former Senate leader; Winston Tubman, a former minister of justice who served until earlier this year as the United Nations Special Representative for Somalia; Nathaniel Barnes, a former finance minister; and Sekou Conneh, leader of one of the armed factions that helped drive Taylor from office in 2003.
Reporter Abdoulaye W. Dukulé attended Weah's all-night rally to launch his campaign last week and sent these reflections.
It was a politician's dream: thousands of young voters, cheering and screaming in the night at every word the candidate uttered. They chanted his name every time he took a breather to wipe sweat from his face and demanded more words when his speech came to an end.
Facing the crowd of groupies and fans, George Manneh Weah seemed right at home on the stage, surrounded by a reggae band with hundreds of older partisans in the background. The rain had stopped just hours before the launching of his official campaign, at his political party's headquarters, where everything had been designed to suit him: the stage, the yard filled with new SUVs and a sea of soccer fans turned political partisans.
As we drove from downtown Monrovia towards the suburb of Sinkor, we tuned in to a live broadcast from the Weah campaign. Veteran politician Baccus Matthews was on the air. Matthews was one of the leaders of the protests in 1979 that brought thousands of unemployed and disgruntled Liberians into the streets to protest the rising price of rice, the country's staple, and led in 1980 to the coup that ousted William Tolbert as president and brought to power a military regime led by Sergeant Samuel Doe.
Weah isn't running to become famous or rich, since he has plenty of fame and money, Matthews said. Weah's purpose is to become "national healer." In 1997, Matthews was himself a candidate. This time, he has chosen to apply his experience to electing a football player with no political resumé. Where this union of aging political populists and young firebrands will take Liberia in the next few months remains to be seen.
Before reaching the headquarters, we decided to stop at the Czech Pub a few hundred yards from the "main event." Next to us was a group of young Weah supporters, their fervor for the candidate readily apparent. Asked if anything could stop Weah from winning, one responded: "If he sits in Monrovia and basks in his popularity and doesn't go out to campaign on real issues and in the countryside."
Entering the headquarters compound was like walking into a sports stadium with the home-team fans. As we moved towards the stage where Weah was preparing to speak, a few raw comments directed at other candidates could be heard.
"I am the voice of the voiceless! I am your voice! I am here to speak for you," Weah declared, speaking into a microphone hanging from his ear. Surrounded by tough looking men wearing black vests over T-shirts saying "security," he was not reading from notes and there was no speech in his hand. It all flowed naturally, in staccato prose, with simple and direct words that brought roars from the crowd.
"The money that your parents spent to send me to Brazil for football camp - that $100,000 and some people say it was a waste - that money made me what I am today," he said. "That small investment has bought me respect and fame and money. And I owe you, I owe you something big, and that is why I am running for president."
After Weah ended his speech, the fans were informed that they could spend the night on the compound. They were told there would be food and music throughout the night and in the morning they could go back home. Once Weah ended his speech with the crowd chanting "More! More!," the reggae band started a new version of Bob Marley's 'War' and the political rally turned into a concert.
As we walked to the exit, my friend stopped to snap pictures of the crowd of vendors. All of a sudden, a young woman appeared in front of us demanding to see identification. She said we could not leave the compound until she knew which media institution we represented. She got on her phone and called a security guard who arrived and started arguing in the same very vocal manner. He said people come and take bad pictures and write derogatory stories about their party and their chairman, and he sent for reinforcements.
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The crowd around us was growing, with some of the youth demanding that they take the camera from us. I reached for my phone and dialed the number of one the leaders of the party who spoke to them. Finally, we were let go, and a security guard came and told us that he was instructed to make sure that nothing had been taken from us and that nobody harmed us. Later, Eugene Nagbe, the secretary general of Weah's party, called to apologize and ensure that we had not been harmed. In the morning, Weah's running mate, Rudolph Johnson, called to do the same.
The Weah steamroller is on. Where it is going, nobody can know. According to some political pundits, Weah's support base is made up of soccer fans and unemployed youth who don't vote. But that is not the view of his fervent backers, like the young fan at the Czech Pub who told us: "This is a game of numbers, and we can get the numbers."
