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Election first step in rebuilding shattered Liberia

posters In this story: July 17, 1997
Web posted at: 10:02 p.m. EDT (0202 GMT)

From Correspondent Bob Coen

MONROVIA, Liberia (CNN) -- Liberians go to the polls Saturday for the first time in more than a decade, and their hopes are few and simple.

"I want a stable government so that our children can go to school ... and we can lead a decent life," says one Liberian.

"It will bring peace, and we hope to live happily together," says another.

vxtreme CNN's Bob Coen reports from Monrovia, Liberia.

Such things are taken for granted elsewhere, but seven years of civil war have scarred the landscape and the people of a nation that 150 years ago became Africa's first independent country.

An armed uprising against a corrupt dictatorship in 1989 turned into an ethnic conflict with seven factions fighting for control of the country and its resources.

As many as 200,000 people were killed and more than a million were forced from their homes. The country's infrastructure was destroyed and a generation of school children were turned into young soldiers.

Even after a coalition of West African states known as ECOMOG sent in a peacekeeping force, the warring factions defied all efforts to end the conflict. More than a dozen agreements were signed and broken, culminating last year with urban warfare in Monrovia, the capital.

Warlord Taylor is presidential favorite

taylor

Finally, however, the factions agreed to peace, and the fighters were disarmed and elections agreed upon.

The man considered the front-runner of the 13 presidential candidates is Charles Taylor, the leader of the first and largest rebel faction and one who suffers no shortage of self-esteem.

"Nobody can bring war against me," Taylor says. "I'm war itself! There will be no more war in Liberia."

With an aggressive, well-funded campaign, Taylor believes the ballot box will finally provide him with what he has been after for years.

"We are going to win," Taylor says, "and the reason I'm so confident is that we are giving it our all.... We have gone door-to-door, we have tried to reach every town, every village. We are on our feet trying to win the hearts and minds of our people."

Sirleaf

Taylor's toughest opposition may prove to be a 58-year-old grandmother named Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf who claims to speak for Liberia's voiceless masses.

"We do not want, and I do not think that the Liberian people want, a continuation of the kind of deterioration that this country has faced," she says.

Voting irregularities feared

"(The warlords) have exploited the natural resources of this country for their own enrichment," Johnson-Sirleaf says. "They have done nothing for the people. There are no schools that are functioning. Hospitals have been looted and plundered. You have people with no medicine. You have none of our offices that are functioning.

"How do you expect people who, for seven years have done nothing but destroy, all of a sudden they are going to come and they're going to do all these great things for the people? That is rubbish. We don't accept it."

Much of the country is covered by impenetrable rain forest and some villages are accessible only by helicopter. Hundreds of thousands of refugees outside the country will be unable to vote, and the electoral commission has had only a few months to prepare for the polls.

There have already been some indications of irregularities -- people with more than one voting card, for example, and underaged voters -- which raises concerns about how free and fair the vote will be.

But more than 300 international observers will monitor the polls, and are encouraged by what they see.

ECOMOG troops to monitor elections

Security and the transportation of personnel and materials at nearly 2,000 polling centers will be handled by ECOMOG troops.

But ECOMOG troops also continue to find caches of hidden arms in the countryside, and there are fears that groups unhappy with the election results may resort to violence.

"I believe, if all these groups certify these elections as being free and fair and are done transparently and are honest, I don't think that anybody would resort to arms to threaten the security of the country," says Maj. Gen. Victor Malu, commander of the ECOMOG troops. "Because then we will be getting the full support of the whole world to go after such persons."

Liberians hope the election will mark the end of a dark period in their history, and the beginning of better times. But there is no underestimating the task ahead. Even if the election and its aftermath are peaceful, rebuilding a country shattered by war may yet prove to be Liberia's greatest challenge.

 
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