{"id":362129,"date":"2017-10-16T05:08:47","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T05:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=362129"},"modified":"2017-10-16T05:08:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T05:08:47","slug":"liberia-election-headed-for-run-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=362129","title":{"rendered":"Liberia election headed for run-off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Former football star George Weah and Vice-President Joseph Boakai are headed for a run-off in Liberia&#8217;s presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly all the results from Tuesday&#8217;s poll have been counted, the election commission says.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Weah, the first African to win the Ballon D&#8217;Or football award, is leading with 39%, while Mr Boakai is in second place with 29%.<\/p>\n<p>A second round between the pair is expected next month.<\/p>\n<p>They lead the field of 20 candidates who competed to succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa&#8217;s first female elected president and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n<p>Fewer than 5% of polling stations have yet to declare results, and lawyer Charles Brumskine is in third place with 9.8%.<\/p>\n<p>Both Mr Weah and Mr Boakai had predicted they would win the first round of voting.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Weah&#8217;s former manager on the football field, Arsene Wenger, was earlier this week apparently duped by false reports that he had already been elected president.<\/p>\n<p>He told reporters: &#8220;It&#8217;s not often you have a former player who becomes president of a country. So well done, Georgie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meet the frontrunners<\/p>\n<p><strong>George Weah, 51<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Former Fifa World Footballer of the Year<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Arsene Wenger, now at Arsenal, was his coach at Monaco in the 1990s<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Has the political backing of jailed warlord and former president Charles Taylor<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Taylor&#8217;s ex-wife, Jewel Howard Taylor, is his running mate<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Joseph Boakai, 73:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Nicknamed &#8220;Sleepy Joe&#8221;<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Denies it is because he is often caught napping at public events, says it is because he is a dreamer<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Vice-president under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf since 2005<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Has distanced himself from her record, saying &#8220;a lot more needs to be achieved&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Liberia, which was founded by freed US slaves in the 19th Century, has not had a smooth transfer of power in 73 years.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Sirleaf took office in 2006, after her predecessor, Charles Taylor, was forced out of office by rebels in 2003, ending a long civil war.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor is currently serving a 50-year prison sentence in the UK for war crimes related to the conflict in neighbouring Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Weah, 51, has chosen Taylor&#8217;s ex-wife Jewel Howard Taylor as his running mate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former football star George Weah and Vice-President Joseph Boakai are headed for a run-off in Liberia&#8217;s presidential election. Nearly all the results from Tuesday&#8217;s poll have been counted, the election commission says. Mr Weah, the first African to win the Ballon D&#8217;Or football award, is leading with 39%, while Mr Boakai is in second place [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[901,3,597],"class_list":["post-362129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-election","tag-ghana-news","tag-liberia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=362129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=362129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=362129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=362129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}