George Weah build apart to steal Liberia presidency

Former football celebrity George Weah has been elected as Liberia’s president.

With nearly about all ballots from Tuesday’s flee-off vote counted, Mr Weah is successfully sooner than opponent Joseph Boakai with more than 60% of the vote.

As records of Mr Weah’s victory emerged, his supporters began celebrating within the capital Monrovia.

He’ll be triumphant Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female president, in Liberia’s first democratic handover in a protracted time.

« My fellow Liberians, I deeply in the end feel the emotion of all of the nation, » Mr Weah wrote on Twitter after the outcomes had been launched.

« I measure the significance and the accountability of the wide activity which I contain on the present time. Commerce is on. »

Who is George Weah?

Mr Weah starred at top-flight European football golf equipment Paris St-Germain (PSG) and AC Milan, before ending his profession in England with brief stays at Chelsea and Manchester City.

He is the one African footballer to bear in mind won every Fifa World Participant of the One year and the prestigious Ballon D’Or.

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He entered politics after his retirement from the game in 2002 and is currently a senator in Liberia’s parliament.

His customary membership, PSG, congratulated him on Twitter.

How did we salvage right here?

Liberia, founded by freed US slaves within the nineteenth Century, has no longer had a delicate transfer of energy from one elected president to one other since 1944.

Mrs Sirleaf defeated Mr Weah within the presidential election flee-off in 2005 and took dwelling of job a year later, after the discontinue of a brutal civil war that saw President Charles Taylor compelled out by rebels. Taylor is now serving a 50-year detention center sentence within the UK for war crimes associated to the struggle in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

This time Mr Weah’s campaign – under the Coalition for Democratic Commerce banner – appealed to the formative years vote, while incumbent Vice-President Boakai used to be seen as faded and out of touch.

But Mr Weah’s election is rarely any longer without controversy, as his running mate used to be Jewel Taylor, customary wife of the jailed president.

The most intelligent trophy of his existence

On the scene: Umaru Fofana, BBC News, Monrovia

A complete bunch of happy supporters of George Weah took to the streets rapidly after the electoral rate chairman launched the discontinue end result.

Election observers, every domestic and international, bear in mind praised the habits of the election and divulge it showed a marked improvement from the main spherical in October.

Here’s 1/3 time lucky for a person worn to a hit trophies nonetheless who chanced on it laborious to steal this, the most intelligent award of his existence. And he has his work lower out for him.

Liberia has stabilised within the past decade after a protracted and bloody civil war. But it is easy fighting acute poverty and corruption. From producing Africa’s first elected female president, now it has produced its first ex-footballer head of affirm.

Why a flee-off?

Mr Weah, 51, won the main spherical of the presidential election in October with 38.4% of the vote, compared with the 28.eight% won by 2nd-placed Mr Boakai, seventy three. The failure of any candidate to precise an outright majority compelled the flee-off.

The National Elections Charge (NEC) talked about on Thursday that with ninety eight.1% of the flee-off vote counted, Mr Weah had won Sixty one.5% of the vote while Mr Boakai used to be a ways within the support of with 38.5%.

Staunch challenges delayed the vote to change Ms Sirleaf, and turnout used to be low – build apart at fifty six% by election officials.

But election observers bear in mind praised the habits of the poll.

Extra than two million folk had been eligible to forged their ballots within the nation of 4.6 million folk.