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Liberia may look to an ex-soccer star to lead

MONROVIA, Liberia - Liberians are flocking to the presidential campaign of a former international soccer star with little formal education and no political experience who promises peace and development for his war-scarred country.

"As I look in your faces tonight, I see that I am your future," said George Weah, his voice booming to boisterous fans as he launched his campaign with an all-night rally this week. His supporters waved placards reading "Rescue Liberia, Vote Weah."

Rival candidate Sekou Conneh, a former rebel leader, helped drive corrupt former President Charles Taylor into exile. Another hopeful, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, lists Citibank vice president and World Bank official on her resume.

George Weah, however, was FIFA's World Player of the Year in 1995. He also coached and played for the national team of Liberia, where soccer has a riveting hold on fans. He sometimes used his own money to pay the team's expenses and travel costs.

Now, the 38-year-old Weah is among 22 candidates running in Oct. 11 elections overseen by nearly 15,000 U.N. troops guarding the country's transition to democracy after the end of its 1989-03 crisis.

His opponents, many with much more time in public service, question whether a man with only a high school education is capable of leading this nation of 3-million.

Weah, whose roots are in Monrovia's slums, has a populist rejoinder: Liberians should look at their crumbling roads, ruined government buildings and refugee camps and ask whether the elite that held power for so long have the answers.

"Politicians have been up there and the masses have been down for many years. It is time for the masses to go up," Weah told the Associated Press in an interview. In a deeply impoverished country where only about half the adults can read, his lack of educational credentials may be a boon.

"Degree holders, where are you? Weah is already in the (presidential) mansion," his supporters chanted at the election rally.

Weah became a UNICEF ambassador in 1997. He has worked with the U.N. agency to help fight the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa through education and to promote vocational training to rehabilitate child soldiers.

If he wins, Weah says his administration will focus on putting about 70,000 former combatants to work. He also promises to lower the presidential term limit from six years to four.

Liberia, founded in 1847 by freed American slaves, is Africa's longest self-governed republic. In 1980, in the country's first coup, President William Tolbert was overthrown. In 1989, a charismatic warlord named Charles Taylor - educated, and once imprisoned, in the United States - led a small band of cohorts into Liberia from the neighboring Ivory Coast.

Taylor fought government troops and former allies in a battle that killed 150,000 and ruined nearly every countryside hamlet. In 1996, West African intervention forces quelled the fighting.

Taylor won elections in 1997 and ruled harshly. Another insurgency, including many former Taylor allies, erupted in 2000. Under international pressure, Taylor fled into exile in Nigeria in 2003.

[Last modified August 26, 2005, 01:38:04]