Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

President of Liberia
Incumbent
Assumed office 
16 January 2006
Vice President Joseph Boakai
Preceded by Gyude Bryant
Born 29 October 1938 (1938-10-29) (age 72)
Monrovia, Liberia
Nationality Liberian
Political party Unity Party
Alma mater College of West Africa
University of Colorado at Boulder (B.A.)
Harvard Kennedy School (MPA)
Occupation Economist, Businesswoman, Political activist
Religion Christianity (Methodist)

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born 29 October 1938) is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d'état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions. She placed a distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006.

A peace movement called Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace led to her election, making Liberia the first African nation with a female president. The story is told in the 2008 documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell.[1] Sirleaf is the first modern, and currently the only elected, female head of state in Africa.

Contents

Early life and career

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, to educated parents.[2] While not Americo-Liberian by ancestry, Sirleaf is considered culturally Americo-Liberian by some observers or assumed to be Americo-Liberian.[3][4][5] However, Sirleaf does not identify as such.[6] Her ethnic background is 1/2 Gola from her father's side, and 1/4 Kru and 1/4 German from her mother's side.[7][8]

Sirleaf’s father, Jahmale Carney Johnson, was born into rural poverty.[2] He was the son of a Gola chief named Jahmale and one of his wives, Jenneh, in Julijuah, Bomi County.[9] Her father was sent to Monrovia, where his last name was changed to Johnson because of his father's loyalty to President Hilary R. W. Johnson, Liberia's first Liberian-born president.[9] He grew up in Monrovia where he was raised by an Americo-Liberian family with the surname McGritty.[9] Sirleaf's father later became the first Liberian from an indigenous ethnic group to sit in the country's national legislature.[2][8]

Her mother was also born into poverty in Greenville, Liberia.[9] Her grandmother Juah Sarwee sent Johnson-Sirleaf's mother to Monrovia when Sirleaf's German grandfather had to flee the country after Liberia declared war on Germany during World War I.[2] A member of a prominent Americo-Liberian family, Cecilia Dunbar, adopted and raised Sirleaf's mother.[9]

Sirleaf studied economics and accounts from 1948 to 1955 at the College of West Africa in Monrovia. She was married to James Sirleaf when she was only 17 years old,[8] and then traveled to America in 1961 to continue her studies and earned an accounting degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sirleaf then studied economics and public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government from 1969 to 1971, gaining a Master of Public Administration. She then returned to her home country of Liberia to work under the government of William Tolbert.

She served as Assistant Minister of Finance from 1972 to 1973 under Tolbert's administration. She resigned after getting into a disagreement about spending. Subsequently she was Minister of Finance from 1979 to April 1980. Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, a member of the indigenous Krahn ethnic group, seized power in an April 1980 military coup; President William Tolbert was assassinated and several members of his cabinet were executed by firing squad. The People's Redemption Council took control of the country and led a purge against the former government. Sirleaf was able to narrowly escape by going into exile in Kenya.

From 1983 to 1985 she served as Director of Citibank in Nairobi. When Samuel Doe declared himself president of Liberia and unbanned political parties in the country, she decided to return to her home country to participate in elections and run against Doe. She was placed under house arrest for doing so, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Sirleaf served a much shorter time before taking the offer to once more go into exile. She moved to Washington D.C., and served as Vice President of both the African Regional Office of Citibank, in Nairobi, and of (HSCB) Equator Bank, in Washington. From 1992 to 1997 she worked as assistant administrator, then Director, of the United Nations Development Programme's Regional Bureau for Africa.

Following the outbreak of the First Liberian Civil War in 1989, Sirleaf initially supported Charles Taylor rebellion against Doe, helping to raise funds for his cause. However, she later went on to oppose him. By 1996, the presence of ECOWAS peacekeepers allowed for the cessation of hostilities, resulting in the 1997 general election, which Sirleaf returned to Liberia to contest. As the presidential candidate for the Unity Party, she placed second in a controversial election, losing with 10% of the vote to Charles Taylor's 75%. Many observers said the election was fair, though Sirleaf was soon charged with treason.

After the end of the Second Liberian Civil War and the establishment of a transitional government, Sirleaf was proposed as a possible candidate for chairman of the government. Ultimately, Gyude Bryant, a political neutral, was chosen as chairman, while Sirleaf served as head of the Governance Reform Commission.

Sirleaf once again stood for president as the candidate of the Unity Party in the 2005 general election. She placed second in the first round of voting behind footballer George Weah. In the subsequent run-off election, Sirleaf earned 59% of the vote to 40% for Weah, though Weah disputed the results. The announcement of the new leader was postponed until further investigations were carried out. On 23 November 2005, Sirleaf was declared the winner of the Liberian election and confirmed as the country's next president. Her inauguration, attended by many foreign dignitaries, including United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush, took place on 16 January 2006.

Presidency

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, 71, was Liberia's finance minister in the late 1970s. Her Unity Party came a distant second to Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Party in the 1997 election. Her experience is contrasted with Weah's inexperience Mrs Sirleaf served as Director for Africa at the United Nations Development Programme. The "Iron Lady", as her supporters fondly call her, served as head of the Governance Reform Commission set up as part of the deal to end Liberia's civil war in 2003. She resigned that post to contest the presidency, criticising the transitional government's inability to fight corruption. Mrs Sirleaf's presidential bid is still haunted by remarks she made in a radio interview in the early days of Charles Taylor's rebellion. She said that if Taylor demolished the presidency to get Samuel Doe out of power, they would all help to rebuild it.

During a public debate that brought 11 of the 22 candidates together at the Independence Pavilion in Monrovia, Mrs Sirleaf out-smarted a male presidential candidate who tried to use his selection of a female running mate to win favour from Liberian women. "We don't want a woman second best; we want a woman best," Sirleaf said, to wild applause. Mrs Sirleaf, a divorcee whose ex-husband died a few years ago, is the mother of four sons. She said she wanted to become president in order "to bring motherly sensitivity and emotion to the presidency" as a way of healing the wounds of war. She says she is keen on declaring war against corruption. In the first round of 2005 voting, she came second with 175,520 votes, putting her through to the runoff vote on 8 November against former soccer player George Weah. On 11 November, the National Elections Commission of Liberia declared Sirleaf to be president-elect of Liberia. On 23 November, they confirmed their decision saying that Sirleaf had won with a margin of almost 20% of the vote. Independent, international, regional, and domestic observers declared the vote to be free, fair, and transparent. Her supporters said she had two advantages over the man she faced in the run-off — former football star George Weah — she is better educated and is a woman.[10] Her inauguration took place on 16 January 2006; foreign attendees of the ceremony included Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush and Michaëlle Jean.

US Ambassador Donald E. Booth and Liberia's then–president-elect Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

On 15 March 2006, President Sirleaf addressed a joint meeting of the United States Congress, asking for American support to help her country “become a brilliant beacon, an example to Africa and the world of what love of liberty can achieve.”[11] On August 7, 2010 Chief Femi Fani-Kayode wrote an article titled "Charles Taylor: A Man Betrayed" in which, as a key player and an insider at the material time, he carefully highlighted the events and circumstances leading up to the extradition of the infamous former President of Liberia Charles Taylor from Nigeria, where he had been given refuge and asylum after a bitter war and crisis in his nation Liberia. Chief Femi Fani-Kayode explained how Taylor ended up being handed back to Liberia and how he was then sent to the International Criminal Court at the Hague in the Netherlands to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.[12] Chief Femi Fani-Kayode had been the spokesman of President Olusegun Obasanjo and of the Nigerian government at that time and in his essay he gave a first hand and vivid account of how Charles Taylor was betrayed by a number of parties and nations and exposed what he described as the "treacherous and ignoble" roles that President George W. Bush of the United States of America and President Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia played in the whole saga. He accused both America and Liberia of reneging on their word and on an earlier agreement on the Taylor issue and he alleged that they "betrayed the confidence" that the African Union, the ECOWAS Heads of Government, Nigeria and President Olusegun Obasanjo had placed in them. Finally he called for the trial of former President George W. Bush and Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair at the same International Criminal Court at the Hague for what he described as "similar crimes against humanity" as the ones that former President Charles Taylor was being accused of. He alleged that they had committed these crimes during the illegal invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Baghdad in which he claimed that "hundreds of thousands of defenceless and innocent Iraqi women and children" were killed. The article, which was published the day after the sensational appearance of super-model Naomi Campbell at the famous "blood diamonds" trial of Charles Taylor at the Hague, was widely read and created quite a stir in international circles [13].

Uncomfortably for Sirleaf, former President Taylor's followers remain in large numbers in Liberia's government. Taylor's estranged wife, Jewel Howard Taylor, is in the Senate. So is Prince Johnson, whose gruesome torture and murder of President Samuel Doe in 1990 was captured on a widely-distributed videotape.

On 26 July 2007, President Sirleaf celebrated Liberia's 160th Independence Day under the theme "Liberia at 160: Reclaiming the future." She took an unprecedented and symbolic move by asking 25 year old Liberian activist Kimmie Weeks to serve as National Orator for the celebrations. Kimmie became Liberia's youngest National Orator in over a hundred years and delivered a powerful speech. He called for the government to prioritize education and health care. A few days later, President Sirleaf issued an Executive Order making education free and compulsory for all elementary school aged children.

President Sirleaf is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development. She was one of the seven internationally eminent persons designated in 1999 by the OAU to investigate the Rwandan genocide, one of the five Commission Chairs for the Inter-Congolese Dialogue and one of two international experts selected by UNIFEM to investigate and report on the effect of conflict on women and women’s roles in peace building. She was the initial Chairperson of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), and a visiting Professor of Governance at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).

Sirleaf attended the College of West Africa in Central Monrovia, and holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She has received seven Honorary Doctorate degrees from universities around the world, including Yale University in 2010, and is founder and chief supporter of Measuagoon, a community development NGO in Liberia.

In 1979, as Minister of Finance of Liberia, Sirleaf spearheaded the move to curb the mismanagement of government finances. After the military coup of 1980, she served as President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI), Vice President of CITICORP’s Africa Regional Office in Nairobi and Senior Loan Officer at the World Bank where she was an initial member of the World Bank Council of African Advisors. In 1985, she took a sabbatical to contest for a seat in the Liberian Senate. She was placed under house arrest and then sentenced to ten years in prison for speaking against the Samuel Doe regime. After being incarcerated for a few months, she fled to the United States and served as Vice President for Equator Bank and in 1992 she joined the UNDP as Assistant Administrator and Director of its Regional Bureau of Africa with the rank of Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. She left that post in 1997 to run as a Presidential candidate against Charles Taylor where the official results placed her second in a field of thirteen.

She is the recipient of several awards including the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award (2007); the Africa Prize for the Sustainable End of Hunger (2006); the IRI Freedom Award (2006); the David Rockefeller Leadership Bridging Award (2006) and the Common Ground Award (2006). Special honors received include Commander de l’Ordre du Mono of Togo (1996); Ralph Bunche International Leadership Award (1995); Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom of Speech Award (1988) and the Grand Commander of the Star of Africa Redemption (1980).

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

In 2005 She established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Liberia) with a mandate to "promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation" by investigating more than 20 years of civil conflict in the country. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was released July 1, 2009 and is available at www.trcofliberia.org.

In their Final Report, issued June 2009, the TRC included Sirleaf in a list of 50 names of people that should be "specifically barred from holding public offices; elected or appointed for a period of thirty (30) years" for "being associated with former warring factions."[14] On 26 July Sirleaf apologized to Liberia for supporting Charles Taylor, adding that "when the true nature of Mr. Taylor’s intentions became known, there was no more impassioned critic or strong opponent to him in a democratic process" than she.[15] On 28 August Liberia's parliament announced they must "consult our constituents for about a year" before deciding whether or not to implement the Commission's recommendations.[16]

Positions

Other previous positions:

Miscellaneous information

President Sirleaf addresses the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Publications

Awards

See also

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund

Notes

  1. ↑ November 2009 MEDIAGLOBAL
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Harvard University Kennedy School Bulletin, "Ellen!", Spring 2006
  3. ↑ Tish Kofa, "Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf finally confesses to funding Liberian civil war", The Liberian Dialogue, September 28, 2005
  4. ↑ CBC News, "Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf: Liberia's 'Iron Lady'", March 28, 2006
  5. ↑ Anna Koblanck, "Liberian Becomes Africa's First Elected Female Prez", Women's eNews, November 4, 2005
  6. ↑ About.com, "Biography: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia's 'Iron Lady'"
  7. ↑ Reed Kramer, "Liberia: Showered With Enthusiasm, Liberia's President-Elect Receives High-Level Reception in Washington", AllAfrica.com, 11 December 2005
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Britannica Online Encyclopedia, "Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf"
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Liberia Past And Present, "Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's tribal roots and Americo Liberian background"
  10. ↑ "Profile: Liberia's 'Iron Lady'", BBC News, 23 November 2005.
  11. ↑ "Liberia: President Sirleaf Thanks U.S. Congress, Asks for Continuing Support", allAfrica.com, 15 March 2006.
  12. ↑ "Charles Taylor: A Man Betrayed", National Daily, 7 August 2010
  13. ↑ "Charles Taylor: A Man Betrayed", Next, 9 August 2010
  14. ↑ Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia Final Report Volume II
  15. ↑ Clinton Supports President of Liberia, New York Times.
  16. ↑ Liberian Parliament Delay Action on Truth Commission Findings, Bloomberg
  17. ↑ "Women Who Rule: 10 First". Archived from the original on 2009-10-31. http://www.webcitation.org/5kwbhrpSM. 
  18. ↑ [1]
  19. ↑ Dartmouth College, "Dartmouth Commencement 2008"
  20. ↑ (http://info.law.indiana.edu/news/page/normal/7887.html>)
  21. ↑ Alpha Kappa Alpa Sorority, Inc., Johnson-Sirleaf Inaugurated as Liberian President
  22. ↑ [2]
  23. ↑ Search for Common Ground, "Common Ground Awards 2006"
  24. ↑ The Africa Prize for Leadership
  25. ↑ [3]
  26. ↑ [4]
  27. ↑ [5]
  28. ↑ Brown University, "Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to Receive Honorary Degree"
  29. ↑ [6]
  30. ↑ [7]
  31. ↑ [8]

References

External links

Political offices
Preceded by
Gyude Bryant		 President of Liberia
2006–present		 Incumbent