Liberian President George Weah has lost a re-election bid after his first term of 6 years. He lost to former vice president Joseph Boakai in a tight runoff after the first round of voting in October that saw neither reach the 50 percent threshold required for outright victory. The country’s elections commission said that the 78-year-old Boakai, had managed to secure a narrow victory with 50.9 percent of the vote to Weah’s 49.1 percent, with almost all the votes counted.
The results mark a considerable shift compared with 2017 when former international football star Weah had succeeded in defeating Boakai comfortably by garnering 62 percent of the vote. He had ridden a wave of public hope to the presidency, promising to combat poverty, develop the country’s ailing infrastructure and crackdown on injustice and corruption. But voters grew disillusioned over time and the 57-year-old Weah was accused of failing to live up to his election promises to improve conditions in the country.
The significance of the presidential vote lies not so much in the outcome as in the manner Weah peacefully accepted he had lost. “The Liberian people have spoken and we have heard their voice,” he said in an address to the nation. “The results announced tonight, though not final, indicate that… Boakai is in a lead that we cannot surpass.” Weah said his CDC party “has lost the election but Liberia has won. This is the time for graciousness in defeat.” Boakai’s supporters took to the streets in the capital Monrovia after he was declared the winner to celebrate. He told the Reuters news agency that “we have a job ahead of us to do and I’m excited that the citizens have given us approval. First and foremost, we want to (send out) a message of peace and reconciliation.”
Two things to note. Firstly, Weah could very well have gone to court to contest the final outcome. After all, he led in the first round in October. But he didn’t take the legal path, accepting he had lost even before the final tally came in. This “graciousness” is rare in a region of Africa that has witnessed the overthrow of seven democratically elected governments since 2013. In contrast, Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country, conducted a presidential election in February but the legal contest was only concluded in November – six months after a new president had taken office. Incidentally, the new helmsman Bola Ahmed Tinubu is the current chair of the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
In congratulating the people of Liberia on their presidential election, Tinubu described President Weah’s “great act of democratic sportsmanship as” exemplary, particularly in West Africa, where “malign actors attack democracy, bent on subverting the people’s will.” He said Weah had “defied the stereotype that peaceful transitions of power are untenable in West Africa.” Tinubu said Weah also “demonstrated that the outcome of elections need not become the propellant of violence and unrest and that the will of the people must always be respected.”
Two, Weah comported himself as the real sportsman that he was. He knew when he had lost the match and walked off the pitch to prepare for the next one. He told his party partisans to “follow my example and accept the result of the elections,” adding that “our time will come again” in 2029 when Boakai’s six-year term ends. There is a big lesson here for our African politicians who profess faith in democracy but still won’t accept election outcomes that do not favour them. An election is like a football match that is played according to rules. To play in it, you must accept the rules, including the decisions of the referee. Yes, there are occasional aberrations when players become hotheaded and attack one another but aberrations there are. The final result stands and losers live to ‘fight’ another day just as Weah, a world renowned footballer, winner of the prestigious Ballon d’Or and African Player of the Year, has just done. Play by the rules and accept the outcome, which way it goes. Here football has something to teach politicians – our politicians. In football, players think not of themselves but the team. Weah didn’t let his loss bother him but was more concerned about Liberia. The country is trying to recover from two civil wars between 1989 and 2003 that killed some 250,000 people and an Ebola outbreak in 2013 that killed thousands. A Weah would not be a cog in the wheel of that recovery effort.
Three. The coups d’etats that have taken place in some French speaking nations in West Africa, some say, speak of receding faith in democracy. But in other countries, mostly those that are English speaking, there have been peaceful transitions of power from one elected regime to another. A loud affirmation of faith in the same democracy! Come to think of it, what is happening in Francophone West Africa isn’t a rejection of the popular vote as it is a throwaway of a choking French neo-colonialism that grants political independence without its economic life wire. The only problem is that it is soldiers, not politicians, that are doing the cutting of ties.
