President George Weah of Liberia has told parliament that he would fight for re-election this year, following a first term marked by corruption charges and an economic crisis. Weah was elected in 2018 in the West African country’s first peaceful transition of power in seven decades, and he is legally allowed to compete again in the October 10 elections. “I will be coming to you shortly to ask you to renew my term, which you granted me six years ago,” he declared in parliament on Monday, vowing to promote change, growth, and peace.
“Let me tell you that the status of our nation is robust,” Weah said in defending his first term. Our country’s situation is steady… Our country is in a calm and safe state. This is how we aim to preserve it.” Liberia is still reeling from the aftermath of a 1980 military coup and a 14-year civil war that concluded in 2003. Weah, a former international footballer who came to prominence in a Monrovia slum, won a resounding run-off win in the last general election in 2017 with the backing of young people and the impoverished. The 56-year-old leader pledged to put an end to the widespread corruption that her predecessor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was harshly criticized for failing to confront. Corruption, however, remains widespread in the country, with Transparency International putting Liberia 136th out of 180 nations in its 2021 corruption perceptions index. In 2018, a corruption scandal involving the loss of $100 million in newly produced central bank notes in Liberia triggered widespread charges of mismanagement of public finances inside Weah’s government. Last year, the US sanctioned three Liberian government officials, including Weah’s chief of staff, for their alleged continuous involvement in public corruption.
Disillusionment has been exacerbated by economic collapse in a country where the majority of the people is impoverished. Liberia, which has a population of five million people and is one of the poorest in the world, has also been heavily struck by the results of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to World Bank data, about half of its population lives on less than $1.90 per day. Weah said in October 2020 that he would seek just two terms, citing riots in neighboring Ivory Coast and Guinea over their presidents’ ambitions for a third term. Liberia was founded as a colony by former US slaves in 1822 and became Africa’s first republic 25 years later.
