Liberian president unveils first cabinet-post picks

Newly inaugurated President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf today unveiled her first nominations for Cabinet-level positions in Liberia’s post-war elected government, tapping a female international banker to be her economy minister.

On her first full day in office, Africa’s first-ever elected female head of state also met foreign dignitaries and addressed a group of traditional leaders, calling on the war-ruined country’s elders to educate their young.

“Don’t let your children go in the market, don’t let them on the farm, let them go to school,” she told the tribal leaders from across Liberia.

“That will depend upon the mothers to make sure that they will help me for us to achieve that objective,” she said.

State radio read out the first nominations for 22 Cabinet positions in Liberia’s first democratically elected government since the end of the most recent in a series of civil wars between 1989-2003.

Antoinette Saydee, who has held posts as World Bank country chief for various West African nations, is the economics minister designate.

Johnson Sirleaf also tapped a one-time national police chief, Brownie Samaki, to be defence minister. Both nominees must be approved by Liberia’s Senate.

Johnson Sirleaf, a 67-year old holder of an advanced degree from Harvard University, took the oath of office yesterday after voting last year arranged by a post-war transitional administration.

Scores of foreign dignitaries looked on as she took the reins of one of the world’s poorest, least-developed nations.

Founded by freed American slaves in 1847, Liberia was prosperous and peaceful for more than a century, bolstered by abundant timber and diamond wealth. But two civil wars brought the country to its knees, killing 200,000 people and displacing half the tiny nation’s population of three million.

Today, not even the capital has running water or electricity: the rich rely on generators, the poor on candles.

Ensuring Liberia remains peaceful will be Sirleaf’s most pressing – and perhaps most difficult – task.

George Weah, the soccer star who lost the November run-off, was backed by most of the country’s top warlords and faction leaders. Weah grudgingly accepted defeat and attended the inauguration.

Several MPs in the new legislature, including the new House speaker, are under a UN travel ban and assets freeze for constituting a threat to peace. One newly appointed senator ordered his troops to hack off the ears of a captured president in 1990. Others are allies of one-time warlord and president Charles Taylor, who was forced from power in 2003 as rebels shelled the capital.

Taylor is wanted by a UN-backed war-crimes court in Sierra Leone for his role in fuelling that country’s own civil war, but Nigeria has refused to hand him over saying it must fulfil obligations it made as it brokered peace in Liberia.

Another crucial task will be to assure the future of 100,000 ex-combatants who laid down arms last year. Many of them now prowl the streets, unemployed.

For now, Sirleaf’s government is backed by 15,000 UN troops.

Born in Liberia in 1938, Sirleaf worked her way through college in the US by mopping floors and waiting tables. She graduated with an M.P.A. from Harvard in 1971 and later took top jobs in Liberia, including finance minister, and senior positions at Citibank, the World Bank and the UN.

Twice-imprisoned in Liberia in the 1980s for political reasons, she returned during a break in fighting in 1997 to run for president. She lost to Taylor, but tried again last autumn, emerging victorious in a landslide vote.