The Liberian presidential elections have come and gone but the positive take-aways keep reverberating across the African continent. For a country with less than 6 million people this is laudable. An eye-witness in Liberia for both the presidential election and its run-off, Mr. Lanre Arogundade has commended the electoral process and the conduct of all the stakeholders for making democracy to work during the polls.

Incumbent president George Weah was defeated by Joseph Boakai, a former Vice President. President George Weah won the first ballot marginally but did not meet the constitutional threshold of scoring up to 50 percent of the votes cast. Joseph Boaki in a keenly contested run-off election on November 14, polled 712,741 votes, representing 50.89% of the total votes ahead of George Weah who got 696,520 votes, representing 49.11%.

Reviewing the Liberian election on Channel Television on Wednesday, Mr. Lanre Arogundade, Executive Director, International Press Centre, who was an international observer and an eye-witness of the general election, described the election as exceptionally well attended, free of anomalies, and dominated by issues.

Mr. Lanre Arogundade, Executive Director IPC

He described the election as transparent with every stakeholder, including the country’s electoral body, playing their roles without interference.

He also acknowledged the role of women in the success of the polls indicating that women played the majority role in the successful conduct of the election. He also acknowledged the peaceful conduct of the poll, adding the security officers who played vital role by not over-policing the election.

He said “My first Observation was the fact that this was an election that young people largely drove and that may not be surprising because about 70% of Liberia’s population are young people that is, young people between the ages of 1 and 35, so at the rallies of the political parties we saw a lot of young people displaying a lot of enthusiasm like singing, dancing passionately talking about the issues in the election. Another observation was also the role of women, we also had very large participation of young women who went out in large numbers in different party colours and again talking passionately about their candidates.

“I could say I observed the fact that the choice by the electorate in Liberia was largely driven by what we can call issues and they were looking more at the performance of the outgoing president in terms of what their expectations were six years ago and it would seem that for majority of them, these expectations were not met.

“The fact that the people were ready to make democracy work in their country . The process was very transparent and its like everybody knew their jobs and did their job, the political parties had agents in all polling places, the agents were very patient and they ensured that they had signed copies of results after they have been counted and recorded and in the process where they suspected some anomalies, they came out and you could see trained party agents who were referring to the polling counting manuals by the national electoral commission in Liberia- a one hundred page document.

“I need to say something about the role of women in Liberia, in most of the polling places, usually you have five NEC officials, one is a presiding officer, one is a voter identification officer, usually you have most of them where four are women, presiding officers were women young women and in any case, you did not have voter suppression, ballot boxes were not snatched and this is a country that is under policed, they do not really have policemen in Liberia. I observed the election in the southeast of the country, where the equivalent of a DPO in Nigeria or commissioner of police were going around on motorbike they did not have the luxury of vehicles the policemen at the police stations were not armed, and in some places where they did not have policemen, men of the fire brigade just stood there to maintain some law and order, nobody came with guns, nobody snatched ballot boxes. At the end of the day, democracy would work when first and foremost political parties are willing to make democracy work secondly the people themselves are patient. I would probably begin to rate Liberia as the most patient people in the whole world

Speaking on the expectations of the Liberians from their newly elected president, Mr Arogundade pointed at infrastructural development as the key area where Mr Joseph Boakai must pay attention to in his government.

“I think most of them would be expecting the president to deal with the problem of infrastructure; in the southeast of Liberia for example, they have the problems roads, remember even when George Weah was campaigning on one occasion, he had to fly by helicopter or even go through Cote d’ Ivoire, they really felt disappointed even getting to Liberia, the road from the airport the main town is yet to be completed. I felt that they would be looking at how this new president could fix the problem of infrastructure in the country and, of course, large youth unemployment and ofother problems, which we might say is quite common when we look at west Africa, he said.