Liberia’s run-up to 2017: continuity and change in a long history of electoral politics

SUMMARY

If successfully orchestrated, the October 2017 elections in Liberia will mark the first time in recent memory when a democratically elected Liberian president – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – will hand over power to a similarly elected head of state. This is very likely to be a close election and our Briefing investigates changes and continuities in the candidates, political parties, electoral processes and the workings of the Liberian state at a watershed moment in a long and shifting democratic history.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank ROAPE editor Leo Zeilig for his responsiveness, efficiency and invaluable feedback; ROAPE production editor Clare Smedley for her assistance; as well as the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of the Briefing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Robtel Neajai Pailey is a Liberian academic, activist and author of the anti-corruption children’s book Gbagba (2013, One Moore Book).

David Harris is a specialist in African politics, in particular in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana, and author of Sierra Leone: a political history (2013, Hurst & Co).

Notes

1 All actors running in some form in the 2017 elections, at the time of writing, are presented at first in italics.

2 Out of 15 senators elected in 2014, there were only three surviving incumbents. Of the other 12 senators, nine lost their individual races – in five of these cases emerging as low as fourth, fifth or sixth in number of votes – and three did not compete. The number of independent candidates remained at three, although two were new senators. Note, however, that the turnout was hampered by the Ebola crisis, and was unusually low at 25.2%, compared to the 71.6% turnout in 2011 and 74.9% in 2005 (NEC Liberia 2014, 2011, 2005).

3 This has already come to fruition with the Supreme Court upholding as constitutional a 2014 Civil Service Code of Conduct provision that political appointees vying for elected office must resign two years before elections are held.

4 It is now speculated that Jones may have actually resigned in 2016, making him ineligible to run for president in 2017.

5 The constitutional crisis surrounding the implementation of the 2014 Code of Conduct prompted President Sirleaf in early April 2017 to appoint a three-member Ombudsman to enforce the Code.

6 Unlike Jones, Morlu, Urey or Cummings, the controversial model-turned-philanthropist Macdella Cooper of the Union of Liberian Democrats (ULD) lacks sufficient political chutzpah to make a real dent in the election results.