Dead heat in Liberian poll

 Presidential elections in contemporary Liberia are like the biblical eye of the needle through which a camel seeks to wriggle through. The polls customarily go into runoffs because contenders can’t make the cut of victory at first shot. Things were no different in the latest election held on 10th October, which threw up incumbent president, George Weah, and opposition candidate, Joseph Boakai, in the tightest tally of that country’s two decades long history of restored democratic rule. Weah secured 43.84 percent of the vote and Boakai, 43.44 percent, with more than 98 percent of the ballots counted by the electoral body as at mid-last week. Although the vote was largely peaceful across the country, the elections commission said hundreds of voters in two polling stations in Liberia’s northeast Nimba County were to re-cast their ballots last Friday after unidentified persons stole ballot boxes. 

Although official results may not be called by the National Elections Commission until later this week, the country’s electoral law requires a contender to edge past 50 percent of votes cast to win at first round. This threshold was already out of reach for the two leading candidates, Weah and Boakai, with what remained outstanding for the electoral body to tally last week, meaning they were inevitably headed for a runoff. The two men were well ahead 18 other presidential candidates who ran in the 10th October poll. A runoff between them would re-enact the 2017 contest when Weah won the runoff with 61.5 percent of the votes to Boakai’s 38.5 percent. He had won the first round at the time with 38.4 percent of the votes as against 28.8 percent polled by Boakai – suggesting that Boakai mounted a stronger challenge this time around. By law, the electoral body has 15 days from the date of the election to announce the final results. If neither candidate gets more than 50 per cent, as it looks certain already, a runoff will be held on 7th November or thereabouts. 

The 2023 poll was the first such contest to be fully organised by the Liberian government since the end of the second civil war in 2003 without major funding support from international partners, indicating that the country has come of age in nationhood and socio-economy. It was as well the first to take place since the United Nations ended its peacekeeping mission in Liberia in 2018. That mission was emplaced after more than 250,000 people died in two civil wars between 1989 and 2003. There are some 2.4million people eligible to vote in the coastal nation of 5.5million citizens, and turnout at the 10th October first round poll was as high as to reach beyond 77 percent, underscoring the intensity of public interest in the determination of the country’s leadership.

Both George Weah, 57, and Joseph Boakai, 78, are old hands in Liberian politics. Mr. Weah, a former football superstar who in 1995 became the first and only African footballer to win the Ballon d’Or, swept to power in the 2017 poll. But he had been a contender for the top office long before that time, having contested in the first post-transition election in 2005 against Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf who eventually won the poll. He led in that election at first round on the platform of his Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), but lost out to Johnson-Sirleaf of the Unity Party (UP) in the runoff. Sirleaf polled 59 percent of the votes to Weah’s 41 percent to win her first six-year term. In the 2011 election, Weah stepped down to become running mate to Winston Tubman on the CDC ticket that challenged Johnson-Sirleaf’s second term bid. Again, no winner emerged at first round and the poll went into a runoff that was boycotted by the Tubman-led CPC, and which Sirleaf won with 90.7 percent landslide. It was reported, however, that unlike 74.9 percent voter turnout in the first round, turnout for the runoff was 61 percent.

“Zero sum disposition to political competition in Nigeria makes peaceful electoral environment elusive.”

For his part, Boakai is as well a veteran who was vice president from 2006 to 2018 under Johnson-Sirleaf, and the UP candidate that contended and lost to Weah of CDC in the 2017 election that was also decided in a runoff. He was also a government minister in the 1980s. In the 2017 poll, Weah cast himself as the plucky outsider who could shake things up in contrast to Boakai, seen as an establishment figure. A role swap characterised the 2023 election, however. Weah had won office in 2017 on promises to grow infrastructure and tackle widespread corruption; and although he partly delivered on infrastructure, the jury is out on whether he did much about corruption. The United States Treasury, last year, imposed sanctions on three Liberian officials for corruption, one of them Weah’s chief of staff. The president promised an investigation but has yet to follow through. 

There is also the economic factor. Food and fuel prices have skyrocketed, and even though this was partly due to global headwinds, most Liberians have had to contend with escalating living costs. This was what apparently motivated an open protest in December, last year, when more than a thousand people marched through Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. Boakai ran an anti-Weah campaign, promising to relieve the economic hardships and invest in infrastructure as well as agriculture. He is, however, being dogged by questions over his health and fitness for the rigours of the presidency. The options are what Liberians will have to make their choice from at the impending runoff.

Meanwhile, there are lessons we can learn in Nigeria from the Liberian poll. The enthusiasm of the Liberian electorate has typically been high, and it was even more so in the latest poll with over 77 percent voter turnout, compared with 27 percent turnout in the 2023 Nigerian national elections. Whatever it is that so motivates Liberian voters is something Nigeria should be keen to learn and apply to the extent of contextual relevance in our country. Also, domestic and foreign observers applauded peaceful polls in a country that is yet recovering from two brutal civil wars. Former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Professor Attahiru Jega led the observer mission for ECOWAS, which gave as much indication in its statement. Political passions run high in Liberia during elections just like everywhere else, and I can say this from experience because I had the opportunity of observing the 2011 and 2017 elections in that country. But political gladiators manage to rein in virulent passions and hold their supporters in check for overall peaceful conduct of the elections. Already, ahead of the impending runoff, the two gladiators – Mr. Weah and Mr. Boakai – are wooing over smaller parties to garner their support. Zero sum disposition to political competition in Nigeria makes peaceful electoral environment elusive. And this has been the bane of our electoral experience, such that the nation’s electoral body, INEC, has repeatedly raised the alarm of the threat of violence even regarding the imminent off-cycle governorship polls in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states. Political actors in Nigeria can learn from their Liberian counterparts about putting political passions on leash for overall security of the electoral environment.

One other instructive thing is the fidelity of the Liberian political class to their respective partisan affiliation. Since his 2005 debut in presidential contestation in his country, Weah has been running on CDC platform, even so when he ceded the prime slot in 2011 to Tubman while he settled for being running mate. In like manner, Boakai has always run on UP ticket: he did so as running mate to Johnson-Sirleaf in 2005 and 2011, and as the main contender in 2017 and 2023. It could be an indication of  ideological commitment when political actors stick to a partisan platform, and this makes followership equally committed. The experience we have in Nigeria is of political actors defecting across political platforms at every turn, indicating crass opportunism and loyalty only to their political aspiration and not to any collective ideology. Followers are equally fickle, ideologically speaking, and it is this fickleness that apparently gets inverted to zero sum commitment to getting their candidate into power. This has not much helped our political culture in this country and Liberia offers useful lessons on alternative route.