Former soccer star George Weah leads in partial presidential
election results in 11 of Liberia’s 15 counties, the electoral
commission said on Thursday, after a vote meant to bring about the
country’s first democratic transfer of power in decades.
Early
results from Tuesday’s poll read to reporters by the commission’s
chairman left Weah’s camp confident he would win the outright majority
he needs to avoid a run-off, even though most counties had reported
tallies from less than a third of polling stations.
The
other favourite in the 20-candidate field, Vice-President Joseph
Boakai, led in just one county, although he was running in second in
most others.
“I can say for sure that Ambassador George
Manneh Weah is going to be the next president of the Republic of
Liberia,” Weah’s adviser Mulbah Morlu told Reuters. “The people of
Liberia have spoken.” he said.
The final results must be announced by October 25 and a run-off will be held next month if no one has won a majority.
Before
the commission’s announcement, parties backing three other candidates
alleged fraud and vowed to contest the results. But international
observers said they had seen no major problems with the vote.
“The
overall conduct of the voting was generally assessed as either good or
very good,” the EU mission said in a statement on Thursday.
Observers
from the U.S.-based Carter Center and National Democratic Institute
(NDI) also said they had not identified any major issues with the voting
or subsequent counting.
The allegations of
irregularities centred on charges that extra ballots were printed in
advance and marked with votes for Boakai from the ruling Unity Party of
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
However, none of the parties provided evidence of cheating. A Unity Party leader declined to respond to the accusations.
Earlier
Thursday, Johnson Sirleaf, who became Africa’s first elected female
president when she won a surprise victory in 2005 following a post-war
transition, hailed the election as historic.
“We believe that all Liberians are ready for this process. I thank them for participating in this process,” she told reporters.
Liberia,
Africa’s oldest modern republic, was founded by freed U.S. slaves in
1847 but its last democratic power transfer occurred in 1944.
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