Weah (left) and Johnson-Sirleaf.
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP):
A FOOTBALL star vying to become Liberia's first post-war president, vowed to work for peace as he voted yesterday in a presidential runoff that many hope will herald a new era, after a quarter century of coups and conflict.
One-time FIFA player of the year George Weah and former Finance Minister, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, finished first and second respectively, in the October 11 first round, which weeded out 20 other presidential candidates, including warlords and rebel leaders.
Weah, with little formal education or experience in politics, is running on his popularity born from football stardom that has kept him untainted by the country's bloody wars. Johnson-Sirleaf boasts a Harvard University education and has a resume full of top postings in government and the United Nations, but is handicapped by her association with past failed governments.
"It's going to be a tough battle," said Liberian journalist Raymond Zarbay. "Whoever wins will have to take Liberia from where it is. Can either one do it? That's the million dollar question."
BRING PEACE
If he wins, "my first priority will be peace ... bringing people together," Weah said as he voted at a school in Monrovia.
Weah, dressed all in white and surrounded by a throng of reporters, then escorted his mother into a polling booth before driving off in a dark blue sedan.
Johnson-Sirleaf travelled to the wartime rebel stronghold of Tubmanburg to lodge her vote. Guarded by U.N. peacekeepers but appearing relaxed, she expressed confidence she would prevail at the polls.
"All Liberians should go out and vote their conscience for the betterment of their lives and their country," she told reporters at Tubmanburg, 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of the capital, Monrovia.
VERY CONFIDENT
"I'm very confident that the Liberian people will vote for me."
Lines began forming outside polling stations just before voting began as scheduled at 0800GMT.
About 50 people waited outside a school in the capital early yesterday. The six polling workers there prayed together in a circle just before the voters began filing into a bare, concrete room.
Augustin Forkpa, the first in line, made the sign of the cross against his chest before dropping his ballot into a clear plastic container.
"We're hoping for a better future; we've been suffering too long. And this time around, we hope this election will do us something better," said Forkpa, a finance ministry worker who voted for Johnson-Sirleaf.
Founded by freed American slaves in the mid-1800s, Africa's first republic was once among its most prosperous, bolstered by fields of diamonds and a vast ocean of tropical forests rich in hardwood timber and rubber.
A coup in 1980, which saw cabinet ministers stripped, tied to poles and shot on the beach, heralded a grim era of strife that ended in 2003 when warlord-turned-president, Charles Taylor, stepped down as advancing rebels shelled the capital.
Despite the peace that came with the war's end, little has improved.
Burned-out, bullet-splattered buildings still dot the low skyline, along with others sprouting weeds, that were never completed.
