Former international footballer George Weah was sworn in yesterday as the president of Liberia, promising a “smooth transition” and a crackdown on corruption in a country previously blighted by conflict and coups.
Mr Weah, 51, watched as his predecessor, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female president, lowered the Liberian flag before he stepped forward to raise it and signal the country’s first democratic transition of power since 1944.
The inauguration, at a football stadium south of the capital Monrovia, was watched by ten African heads of state, as well as some of Mr Weah’s footballer friends including former Premier League star Didier Drogba, and thousands of his countrymen who rose at dawn to queue for a space.
Mr Weah was taken through his oath of office by the chief justice before delivering an inaugural address in which he gave a nod to his previous profession, saying: “I have spent many years of my life in stadiums but today is a feeling like no other.”
His inauguration follows 12 years with Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf at the helm and before that, decades of authoritarianism and civil strife in the west African nation founded in part by freed US slaves in the 19th century.
Advertisement
Speaking at the weekend, Mr Weah said he was proud of what his ascent to power represented. “It is a smooth transition, no-one is running around the streets,” he said. “This tells you that we came from a war to peace.”
He is the only African to have won Fifa’s world player of the year and France’s Ballon D’Or. He played for Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan before moving to Chelsea and Manchester City.
A political outsider, who, according to his critics, lacks the technical knowledge to make a difference, he faces multiple challenges including a weak economy, high levels of unemployment and weak education and health sectors.
He has promised to hire a team of experts to help him take the country forward, to rebuild infrastructure to attract investors and bolster agriculture to make the country self-sufficient and able to export the surplus. He also pledged to lift civil servants’ salaries and to stamp out corruption.
Among the thousands of people waiting to enter the stadium was Florence Dukuly, a public administrator, who said the 4.8 million Liberians should not see the new president as “a magician” who could solve all of the country’s problems alone. Average income per capita is $353 a year, and life expectancy is 61 years.
Advertisement
“Liberians have this dependency syndrome,” she said. “We have to help him make it.”
Elizabeth Donnelly, a research fellow at the UK-based Chatham House think-tank, said Mr Weah would have to “manage expectations carefully”.
“This window of optimism will be short,” she said. “He understands that Liberia has a large youth population, whose expectations and needs he must satisfy. This means tangible change in terms of visible civil infrastructure, and it means more jobs and opportunity.”