By 
Elections and a country ‘on the cross’
By Richard Mammah
From historical times, Liberia has indeed been a very interesting nation.
With the upsurge in the abolition movement and the West looking for relatively safe havens to which to resettle victims of the slave trade that were being rescued off the Atlantic coasts, Britain settled for Sierra Leone and America, Liberia.
Subsequently, tensions arose between the indigenous people that had been in the area and the new tribe of Americo-Liberians. And it has indeed been one conflict after the other since then, even as these have occasionally been punctuated by seasons of relative calm and stability.
And then there were also the two Liberian civil wars, the cold-blooded murder of military Head of State, Staff Sergeant Doe, the entry of the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) and later the United Nations Mission in Liberia, UNIMIL, the emergence of Charles Taylor, his eventual ouster, the post-war elections and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s second round defeat of the notable ex-footballer who even led the pack back then, George Oppong Weah.
Today, Sirleaf is on her way out but then there is a blistering contest between Weah and Sirleaf’s two-term Vice President, Joseph Boakai over which of them would succeed her. And the stakes are high and the heat is rising and Liberia needs all the help it can get now.
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