Liberia: Ex-rebel leader pledges support to George Weah

By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh

MONROVIA, Liberia (AA) - The head of one of Liberia’s leading opposition parties, former rebel leader and now senator, Prince Johnson, has pledged his support for the presidential election to former football star George Weah ahead of the Nov. 7, run-off election.

George Weah, who has contested in two successive elections for the country’s highest seat, came first with 38.4 percent of the vote in the first round on Oct. 10. He is up against the ruling party vice president, Joseph Boakai, who claimed 28.8 percent in the second round .

“Judging from the result of the just ended first round or our presidential elections and analyzing the results further, the majority of the Liberian people voted for change; the message therefore was loud, clear and unavoidable,” Prince Johnson said Thursday in the capital Monrovia.

Prince Johnson said his endorsement was in keeping with the Ganta Declaration signed in September 2016, in which opposition leaders committed to ensuring an opposition victory for change in the 2017 election to unseat the ruling party.

He called on members of other opposition parties to join him in helping the defeat of Boakai who is hopping to replace the incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Prince Johnson from Nimba County in northern Liberia led the one of the country’s rebel groups, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia(INPFL), after breaking away from former President Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) during the country’s first civil war bet ween 1989 and 1997.

Johnson could be seen in a 1990 video during the mutilation of the country’s former President Samuel K. Doe who bled to death. He also helped bring now imprisoned Taylor to power after the 1997 election.

Prince Johnson has been seeing critical Weah for having former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s ex-wife, Jewel Howard Taylor as his vice presidential candidate.

Charles Taylor is currently in the Hague facing trial for atrocities committed in neighboring Sierra Leone and facing 50 years jail sentence in the British Court.