Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has won another term in office. But her victory was far from comfortable and there is hard work ahead.

By Bram Posthumus

Only a few weeks ago, things could not have looked better for Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She had just bagged the Nobel Peace Prize and won the first round of the elections – though not in one fell swoop, as her loyal followers would have wished. With almost all results in of the second and final round, she commands 91 percent of the vote. But the mood is distinctly sour. What on earth happened?

Campaign ‘themes’
The key can be found in the early campaign ‘themes’, for want of a better word. Liberian politicians campaign on personalities, not issues. But still: the president and her Unity Party claimed that everything good that had come to Liberia since 2006 was thanks to them. The consolidation of peace, law and order, the fight against corruption, women’s rights...’Da their area’ shouted the billboards.

Iron Lady
The opposition Congress for Democratic Change had no ‘area’ to claim, but they did have a lot of disgruntled people in their rank and file. Ordinary Liberians who questioned the government’s track record. People who said they had become poorer or lost jobs because the government had ‘rightsized’ the public service.

The international community has been dewy-eyed about Johnson-Sirleaf ever since she became the first elected female head of state in Africa. But this Iron Lady is a politician first and a free market ideologue second. Certainly, there is peace in the land, but her economic policies have not been universally beneficial. The disaffected have drifted to the CDC, the only viable alternative to the Unity Party. Their candidate Winston Tubman polled a credible 32 percent in the first round.

Empty polling booths
But Mr Tubman has made a hash of his second round campaign, first claiming election fraud and then demanding the scalp of James Fromayan, a thoroughly decent man who had been running the National Election Commission for five years. Fromayan stepped down in the interests of peace.

Once Tubman got what he wanted he declared a boycott of the second round. Angered by the move, Johnson-Sirleaf said that this was tantamount to telling Liberians that they should throw away their constitutional right to vote. But that is what they did. In Pleebo for instance, the busiest market town in the county of Maryland, Winston Tubman’s homeland, the polling booths were empty (see photos below).

Live ammo
Next, there was the election violence on the eve of polling day, the result of an astonishingly bad reaction by the authorities to an unauthorised CDC demonstration in Monrovia. The CDC is no stranger to threatening with violence when things do not go their way, but the supposedly new and well-trained, cuddly Liberian National Police were shooting live ammunition into a crowd. And then there is the government’s crackdown on the media. It appears that tolerating dissent is not the government’s ‘area’.

Prince Johnson
So there it is: a new Johnson-Sirleaf government with a flawed mandate and a host of challenges. First, it will have to deal with a large CDC following (young, unemployed, disappointed and angry) that will have difficulty recognising this government as legitimate.

Second, there is an unexpected irritant in the shape of former warlord and current senator Prince Johnson. He came a surprising third in October and then pledged his support for Johnson-Sirleaf in exchange for 30 percent of the cabinet seats. The president has studiously ignored him so far. But what if he turns unpleasant?

Credible successor to Johnson-Sirleaf wanted
Most of all though, the new government will have to work doubly hard to convince an increasingly sceptic Liberian public, that it is getting serious about tackling corruption and nepotism and a government that listens to and works for everyone.

The search is also on for a credible successor to President Jonhson-Sirleaf herself. The Nobel Laureate will be a hard act to follow. But she is in an equally difficult place: having claimed that she had brought nothing but good to Liberia, she now has five years to convince everyone (including herself) that the country will carry on just fine without her.