LIBERIA: Observers give election preparations the thumbs-up

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

MONROVIA, 10 Oct 2005 (IRIN) - With just one day to go, international observers said on Monday they were pleased with preparations for Liberia’s first polls since the end of a devastating civil war.

More than 1.35 million people in this West African country will pick a new president on Tuesday from a 22-strong field that includes a millionaire soccer legend, a Harvard-educated grandmother, former rebel leaders and corporate lawyers.

“We have been very satisfied so far,” Jimmy Carter, a former US president and one of more than 400 international observers, told a press conference on the eve of the polls.

“We see the intense commitment of the Liberian people to have an honest, fair, open and safe election,” he said.

Liberia was wracked by civil war for 14 years, with gun-toting crack-addled children fighting for their rival warlords.

The conflict killed an estimated 250,000 people and hundreds of thousands more fled their homes, some ending up in camps within the country, others seeking refuge abroad.

An August 2003 peace deal saw then-president Charles Taylor take asylum in Nigeria and the guns finally fall silent.

Power was handed to a transitional government, composed of the warring factions and civil society groups, which was charged with shepherding Liberia to fresh polls.

Election fever is now gripping the capital, Monrovia, where tens of thousands of supporters, some dressed entirely in the campaign posters of their candidate, have marched through the streets.

“This is an important election, not only for the people of Liberia but also for the sub-region and the continent,” Nicephore Soglo, a former president of Benin and another senior election observer, told reporters on Monday.

One of Liberia’s neighbours, Sierra Leone, is currently rebuilding after its own civil war that officially ended in 2002.

To the east, tensions have been in rising Cote d’Ivoire, where peace-sealing polls planned for this month have been put on ice and the country remains cut in two after a rebel uprising three years ago.

Across Liberia’s other border, in Guinea, diplomats worry about a potentially dangerous power grab if ailing chain-smoking diabetic president, Lansana Conte, were to die.

“We cannot be talking about peace, development and democracy in West Africa if any one of our countries is not in peace,” Nigerian President and regional heavyweight Olusegun Obasanjo said during a flying visit to Liberia last week.

With more than 15,000 peacekeepers stationed in Liberia, in what is the United Nations’ most expensive mission, this war-battered country has enjoyed a violence-free election campaign.

Rival supporters have been giving one another lifts around town and even groups of former combatants happily sit in the sewage-ridden back streets and debate their opposing political views.

“Up to now we have had a very peaceful campaign,” Irfam Abdool Rahman, head of the African Union observer delegation, told reporters on Monday. ”We hope and pray that the same spirit of tolerance will prevail tomorrow and beyond to the results.”

[ENDS]