Liberia's 'Iron lady' ready to make history

She has been bouncing around in the back of four-wheel-drive vehicles, strapping herself into helicopters and dancing in marketplaces across Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is showing the same tenacity in her campaign to become the west African country's next president as she has over her three decades in politics.

Such steely determination has gotten the Harvard-educated economist and grandmother, a reported 66-year-old, thrown into jail twice, backing up her reputation as the "Iron Lady" and, she hopes, cementing her place in history as Africa's first elected female president.

"I have always tried to be me, to live a life filled with activism and fighting for what I believe is right," she told AFP in a pre-election interview.
"I have the breadth and depth of experience in politics and a solid record outside of Liberia. I know that I can be a force for good in this country and am counting on having the chance to try."

She served in, then opposed, consecutive Liberian governments under presidents William Tubman then William Tolbert, and was jailed twice by Samuel Doe, whose military reign was cut short by a coup led by Charles Taylor, whom Sirleaf once enthusiastically supported.

Much of the opposition to Sirleaf, and there is plenty, even among the political elite, stems from that relation to Taylor and the influence the exiled former leader could have on her administration.

Some mistrust her motivation and suggest she will turn her presidency into an opportunity for revenge against her historical foes, while others worry she is too much of an isolationist, apt to dismiss assistance and advice from regional and international partners.

"She is a very tough lady and has made a lot of enemies," said one west African official. "She is definitely like Liberia's Hillary Clinton Nher supporters are as fierce in their admiration of her as her detractors are in their dislike."

Sirleaf earned 19.8 percent of the votes cast in the October 11 first round, winning a majority in four counties and placing second in three others including Montserrado, home to the capital Monrovia and one-third of Liberia's 1,3-million registered voters.

Her second-round rival, football hero George Weah, by contrast, won six counties and took second in seven more.

Sirleaf has failed in the horse trading to cobble together alliances with people she once spoke against, garnering just three endorsements among the 20 candidates she out-ran in the October 11 first round.

That has not stopped her from waging a campaign in the final two weeks that many disdain for its dirty tricks, including full-page spreads in daily newspapers and a whispering campaign against Weah that has accused him of everything from robbery to attempted assassination.

The Analyst newspaper, considered a leader among Liberia's dailies, on Friday had the appearance of a campaign flyer for Sirleaf's Unity Party, with a six-page, full-colour spread touting her achievements and her campaign promises.

"She bought it, of course," scoffed one senior member of a rival party, estimating the cost of the print run at more than $4 000 a princely sum in a nation so impoverished that it does not even register on the UN's Human Development Index.

"I am an educated man and by rights, Ellen should be my candidate in this race. But I just cannot do it on principle, I don't like her, my friends don't like her, and she's going to be using the office of president to fuel her own personal vendetta," added one businessman, toying with the sticker on his desk of lawyer Charles Brumskine, who took third in the first round.

What could also handicap Sirleaf's second run for the presidency is her age, a reported 66 in a country where half of the population is under 30, and the continued characterisation of her as a member of the elite who have ruled Liberia for most of the 158 years since it was settled in 1847 by freed American slaves.

She is also considered a member of the Liberian political elite, another negative in a country riven by ethnic tensions that has pitting elite against native and native on native for more than a century.