Liberia: Pre-Election Protests Turn Violent

Source: The New York Times

: Liberians gathered around the body of a man killed by gunfire Monday in Monrovia. The police and protesters clashed at a rally the day before a disputed presidential runoff election. (image;Issouf Sanogo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

MONROVIA, Liberia — Hundreds of protesters clashed with the police and United Nations peacekeepers here in the Liberian capital on Monday afternoon, leaving at least one person dead the day before a presidential runoff that the opposition has vowed to boycott.

Businesses shuttered and pedestrians fled the streets as United Nations armored vehicles roared down Tubman Boulevard, Monrovia’s main artery. A running battle developed outside the headquarters of the chief opposition party, pitting its supporters against peacekeepers and Liberian security forces, who fired tear gas and live rounds.

Claiming fraud in the first round of elections last month, the opposition candidate, Winston Tubman, has vowed not to take part in Tuesday’s runoff against President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in the midst of a heated re-election campaign.

“Mother Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, she’s responsible,” said George Weah, a former international soccer star who is the opposition’s vice-presidential candidate. “For shooting innocent Liberians, it’s wrong.”

The opposition headquarters were crammed with frenzied supporters after the clashes, and the body of a young man shot through the head was laid out in an upstairs room with other wounded.

Liberia’s justice minister, Christiana Tah, said the elections would go ahead on Tuesday as scheduled. She confirmed that one person was dead and three were injured. But at the city’s Catholic Hospital, there were at least seven people injured from the clashes, five with gunshot wounds.

“We were dancing in the road; they started beating us,” said Solomon Gardea, 30, an unemployed opposition supporter who said a bullet skinned the back of his head as he turned to run away. “We were just marching for peace.”

On Saturday, Mr. Tubman called upon his supporters to behave peacefully but also hinted that violence could break out if the runoff went ahead.

“If they are provoked, we don’t know how they will react,” Mr. Tubman said.

The same day, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf urged Liberians in a nationwide address “not to succumb to fear and intimidation.”

The presidential election is a crucial bellwether of the country’s recovery from civil war, and the campaign season has been one of both triumphs and pitfalls for Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf.

International observers described the first round of the presidential election — the first since 2005 and only the second since Liberia emerged from its devastating 14-year conflict — as free and fair.

The State Department said that it was “deeply disappointed” by Mr. Tubman’s decision to boycott the runoff and that accusations of fraud were “unsubstantiated.”

Some analysts had wondered whether the Nobel committee’s decision to give Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf the prize only days before the voting began would backfire, especially if it came across as an attempt to influence the outcome.

Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, elected in 2005 as Africa’s first female democratically chosen head of state, emerged the clear leader in last month’s voting. But with 44 percent of the vote, she fell short of the majority needed to secure a second term without a runoff, opening the door to some awkward negotiations with her erstwhile competitors.

The third-place finisher was Prince Johnson, a former warlord who was put at the top of the list of the 116 “most notorious perpetrators” in Liberia’s post-war Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. Mr. Johnson, who took 11.8 percent of the national total, appeared in a 1990 video drinking a Budweiser while members of the rebel faction he led at the time cut off President Samuel Doe’s ears.

Mr. Johnson relished his position after last month’s elections, crowing to reporters that his third-place tally made him the “kingmaker” for the runoff. He endorsed Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf but demanded 30 percent of the government in return, raising the specter of a president sanctified abroad entering a marriage of convenience with a notorious malefactor.

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