About 2.4 million voters in Liberia will be exercising their franchise and casting their votes on Tuesday, October 10 in a general election that will see President George Weah seek a second term after a first six years term that was characterised by corruption allegations and persisting economic hardship.
Weah, aged 57, who began his career in politics after a successful soccer career, had since stated that he needed more time to manifest the promise to rebuild the West African nation’s shattered economy, institutions and infrastructure, while also promising to pave more roads if reelected.
Weah had been elected in 2017 in the country’s first democratic change of power in more than 70 years.
He is presently running against 19 other presidential candidates.
To prevent a runoff, the winner had to have a 50% number of votes cast, and at least one more vote.
The iron-ore rich West African nation is still striving to emerge from two devastating civil wars between 1989 and 2003, that killed more than 250,000 people, in addition to the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic that killed thousands.
In 2022, he sacked his chief of staff along with two other senior officials after the United States penalised them for corruption.
He has faced criticism from the opposition and Liberia’s international partners for not doing enough to fight corruption during his first term in office.
Weah’s key opponent is the former Vice-President Joseph Boakai, aged 78, whom he had defeated in 2017.
Boakai’s campaign had harped on the need to rescue Liberia from purported mismanagement by Weah’s administration.
Voters will also be voting for members of the 73-seat lower house, and half of the 30-member senate.
The campaigns for the election has mostly been peaceful, but infrequent clashes have broken out between the supporters of rival parties, forcing the United Nation’s rights office to express their concern over the election-related violence after two people were murdered in September.
Several people got gravely wounded in the capital city on Sunday after fighting broke out between rival supporters even as the campaigns concluded that day.
