{"id":387083,"date":"2017-12-28T15:18:44","date_gmt":"2017-12-28T15:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=387083"},"modified":"2017-12-28T15:38:25","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T15:38:25","slug":"liberia-awaits-presidential-poll-result","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=387083","title":{"rendered":"Liberia awaits presidential poll result"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first provisional results from Liberia’s presidential election run-off election are due later.<\/p>\n

Unofficial results broadcast by local media suggest that ex-football star George Weah is ahead of Vice-President Joseph Boakai following Monday’s vote.<\/p>\n

The electoral commission has warned against “premature pronouncements”.<\/p>\n

Armed police have been deployed around its headquarters in the capital, Monrovia, ahead of the release of official results.<\/p>\n

However, the mood in Monrovia is calm, and people are eagerly awaiting the results, reports the BBC’s Jonathan Paye-Layleh from the city.<\/p>\n

“The Liberian people clearly made their choice… and all together we are very confident in the result of the electoral process,” Mr Weah said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

His supporters had planned a victory parade, but dropped the idea after foreign observers urged them to wait for the official results, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mr Weah, 51, won the first round in October with 38.4% of the vote, compared with the 28.8% of Mr Boakai, 73.<\/p>\n

His failure to secure an outright majority forced a run-off.<\/p>\n

Mr Weah played for a string football clubs, including AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain, and is the only African footballer to have won Fifa World Player of the Year and the coveted Ballon D’Or in 1995.<\/p>\n

He entered politics after his retirement in 2002 and is currently a senator in Liberia’s parliament.<\/p>\n

The winner of the election will succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female president.<\/p>\n

She defeated Mr Weah in the presidential election run-off in 2005, after the end of a brutal civil war.<\/p>\n

Liberia, founded by freed US slaves in the 19th Century, has not had a smooth transfer of power from one elected president to another in more than 70 years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Legal challenges delayed the vote to replace Ms Sirleaf, and turnout seemed to have been low.<\/p>\n

More than two million people were eligible to cast their ballots in the nation of 4.6 million people.<\/p>\n

Ms Sirleaf took office in 2006, after her predecessor, Charles Taylor, was forced out by rebels in 2003, ending a long civil war.<\/p>\n

Taylor is serving a 50-year prison sentence in the UK\u00a0for war crimes related to the conflict in neighbouring Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first provisional results from Liberia’s presidential election run-off election are due later. Unofficial results broadcast by local media suggest that ex-football star George Weah is ahead of Vice-President Joseph Boakai following Monday’s vote. The electoral commission has warned against “premature pronouncements”. Armed police have been deployed around its headquarters in the capital, Monrovia, ahead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":387088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[726,597],"class_list":["post-387083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-george-weah","tag-liberia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387083","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=387083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/387088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=387083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=387083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=387083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}