EX-SOCCER STAR GEORGE WEAH NEARS GOAL OF BECOMING PRESIDENT OF LIBERIA
EX-SOCCER STAR GEORGE
WEAH NEARS GOAL OF BECOMING PRESIDENT OF LIBERIA
It is reported that Liberia will
hold a delayed presidential run-off vote on December 26 with former soccer star
George Weah facing Vice-President Joseph Boakai.
Liberian
presidential poll was held up for several weeks by a court challenge by the
candidate who came third in round one in October, which Weah won with 39
percent of the vote.
Weah, a
national hero in Liberia, became the first non-European to win European
soccer’s player of the year award in 1995, the same year he picked up the
African and world player of the year awards.
“King
George”, as Weah’s supporters call him, is wildly popular among the
youth and the disenfranchised, especially in the shanties of the rundown
seaside capital Monrovia. Many of them feel they have not benefited from
Liberia’s post-war recovery, a sentiment that has counted against Boakai.
Weah,
51, has served as a senator from the opposition Congress for Democratic Change
since 2015, after returning home from an international soccer career to immerse
himself in politics. As a political novice in 2005, he lost to Johnson Sirleaf
in a presidential election.
Liberians
are eager for change after Nobel Peace Prize-winning Sirleaf’s 12-year rule,
which sealed a lasting peace in a country that for decades had only known war,
but which has failed to tackle corruption or much improve a lot of the poorest.