Liberia buzzed with election fever Sunday as Nobel laureates, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and women's activist Leymah Gbowee, took to the streets in a boost for the incumbent's re-election bid.
Throbbing music, chanting and dancing supporters leaning out of car windows and dressed in party colours weaved their way through the traffic-clogged streets of the small seaside capital, while UN and riot police kept close watch.
Gbowee, who is credited with leading women to defy feared warlords and push men toward peace during one of Africa's bloodiest wars, in which some 250,000 died between 1989 and 2003, threw her support behind Sirleaf's campaign.
"I always say to people my work is advocating women's involvement in politics. If I support anyone other than a woman it would be hypocrisy," Gbowee told AFP and French international radio (RFI).
The joint Nobel Peace Prize winner received a rousing airport welcome from her fellow women's rights activists who greeted her in their white t-shirts when she arrived in her home country Sunday morning.
They later gathered on a dusty soccer field where they would pray for peace during the civil war, where Sirleaf came to greet the women and thank them after addressing supporters holding a rally at a stadium in the capital.
Turnout was a lot lower than the final opposition Congress for Democratic Change rally on Friday.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.