After the end of their second civil war in 2003, Liberian politics have been overseen and assisted by the United Nations and other international agencies to promote political stability and democratic institutions. However this trend may be coming to an end as the ongoing election is being administered by the domestic government alone. And so far none of the violent rebel factions and complex foreign ties which still remain from the civil war have interfered in the integrity of the election. The Liberian police are effectively and peacefully handling crowds and the country is seeing a healthy voter turnout. The passive, protective nature of the police’s involvement actually surprises many Liberians given the police’s history of violent, abusive treatment of civilians during and prior to the civil war. This common reaction to good law enforcement practice exemplifies the widespread misuse of power which has become the norm in many parts of Africa. In the way of governmental integrity and proper political practice then, Liberia may be setting an good example for other African nations to follow. If this success can be maintained it may prove to be a prime instance of successful UN influence.<\/p>\n
Also, interesting to note is the role of female leaders in the country. Liberian women have come to represent peace in the country, originating during the civil wars when they would organizing demonstrations and group prayers as calls for an end to the violence. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has served as Liberia’s first elected female leader since 2005, has made peace her major focus during her two terms. In the current election, however, only one out of the twenty candidates is a woman. It will be interesting to see how the female candidate, Macdella Cooper, fares against her rivals in this election, and if the new leadership stresses peace as much as Sirleaf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After the end of their second civil war in 2003, Liberian politics have been overseen and assisted by the United Nations and other international agencies to promote political stability and democratic institutions. However this trend may be coming to an end as the ongoing election is being administered by the domestic government alone. And so far none of the violent… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}