Former soccer star Saint George Weah has been electoral as Liberia’s president.
With nearly all ballots from Tuesday’s run-off vote counted, Mr Weah is well sooner than opponent Joseph Boakai with over hour of the vote.
As news of Mr Weah’s finish emerged, his supporters began celebrating within the capital Monrovia.
He can succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s initial electoral feminine president, in Liberia’s initial democratic relinquishment in decades.
“My fellow Liberians, I deeply feel the feeling of all the state,” Mr Weah wrote on Twitter once the results were declared.
“I live the importance and also the responsibility of the vast task that I embrace these days. modification is on.”
Who is Saint George Weah?
Mr Weah asterisked at top-hole European soccer clubs Paris St-German (PSG) and AC metropolis, before ending his career in European nation with temporary stays at Chelsea and Manchester town.
He is the sole African athlete to possess won each Fifa World Player of the Year and also the prestigious Ballon D’Or.
Who is Saint George Weah?
When sports stars build a run at politics
He entered politics once his retirement from the sport in 2002 and is presently a legislator in Liberia’s parliament.
His former club, PSG, congratulated him on Twitter.
How did we have a tendency to get here?
Liberia, supported by freed USA slaves within the nineteenth Century, has not had a sleek transfer of power from one electoral president to a different since 1944.
Mrs Sirleaf defeated Mr Weah within the presidential election run-off in 2005 and took workplace a year later, once the top of a brutal war that saw President Charles Taylor forced out by rebels. Taylor is currently serving a 50-year jail sentence within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for war crimes associated with the conflict in near Republic of Sierra Leone.
This time Mr Weah’s campaign – beneath the Coalition for Democratic modification banner – appealed to the youth vote, whereas incumbent Vice-President Boakai was seen as recent and out of bit.
But Mr Weah’s election isn’t while not tilt, as his campaigner was Jewel Taylor, former married woman of the confined president.
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The biggest trophy of his life
Hundreds of jubilant supporters of Saint George Weah took to the streets shortly once the electoral commission chairman declared the result.
Election observers, each domestic and foreign, have praised the conduct of the election and say it showed a marked improvement from the primary spherical in Gregorian calendar month.
This is third time lucky for a person accustomed winning trophies however UN agency found it arduous to win this, the largest award of his life. And he has his work cut out for him.
Liberia has stable within the past decade once an extended and bloody war. however it’s still scuffling with acute financial condition and corruption. From manufacturing Africa’s initial electoral feminine president, currently it’s made its initial ex-footballer head of state.
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Why a run-off?
Mr Weah, 51, won the primary spherical of the presidential election in Gregorian calendar month with thirty eight.4% of the vote, compared with the twenty eight.8% won by second-placed Mr Boakai, 73. The failure of Associate in Nursingy candidate to secure an outright majority forced the run-off.
The National Elections Commission (NEC) aforementioned on Thursday that with ninety eight.1% of the run-off vote counted, Mr Weah had won sixty one.5% of the vote whereas Mr Boakai was so much behind with thirty eight.5%.
Legal challenges delayed the vote to exchange Ms Sirleaf, and turnout was low – place at fifty six bye election officers.
But election observers have praised the conduct of the poll.
More than 2 million folks were eligible to solid their ballots within the nation of four.6 million folks.
