The Force Is with Her

If most people had gone through what Ellen Johnson Sirleaf MPA 1971 has suffered in an effort to serve the public, they would have thrown in the towel by now.

She’s been publicly criticized for being a divorced woman. She had to mortgage her United Nations pension to finance a political campaign. She’s been imprisoned, twice. And she has often feared for her life.

But Johnson Sirleaf is determined not to turn her back on Liberia, the West African country started in 1847 by freed African American slaves that she calls home.

"The country deserves more," she says.

Which is why Johnson Sirleaf is willing to run for the presidency a second time against the country’s current president, Charles Taylor. Taylor, a Massachusetts fugitive who broke out of the Plymouth House of Corrections, is credited with starting Liberia’s civil war in 1989, which left more than 200,000 Liberians dead and half of the country’s 2.5 million stranded as refugees in neighboring countries.

Based on her first run in 1997 against Taylor, it won’t be easy. At the time, she was the only female — divorced, no less — among a pool of 13 presidential candidates. And although she didn’t view her gender as an obstacle, many of her political rivals did.

"My divorce was used as a political disadvantage," she says. "In our society, a woman who doesn’t have a husband will not have anyone to keep her in check. In a military state, they try to say that women aren’t strong enough and that in African cultures, the chiefs have always been men. This isn’t true. Historically, there have been very strong women leaders.

"What I don’t have is an army," she adds with a laugh. "But I don’t want an army of destruction. I want to build an army of people willing to construct and stabilize the country."

There are other obstacles, as well. In a country where only one in 53 persons owns a television set (compared to the United States, where one per 1.2 persons owns one) and the literacy rate in 1995 was a mere 38 percent, getting her message across won’t be easy. During the first election, Taylor not only had a steady cash flow supplemented by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, but access to helicopters and cars for remote campaigning — things Johnson Sirleaf didn’t.

Despite that, Johnson Sirleaf was touted as a leading contender in the race.

"Everyone was convinced we were headed for a runoff," she says. "I really had the support. We were surprised that the results were so lopsided." In the official tally, Taylor won with nearly three-quarters of the votes. Johnson Sirleaf followed with just under 10 percent.

"Now," she says, laughing, "some of his people say he won by 87 percent. The election commissioner even admitted he had to stop counting. If he had continued, we guessed, Taylor would have won by more than 100 percent."

Johnson Sirleaf also believes that when it became apparent that she was a strong contender, Taylor supporters wanted their candidate to win, at any cost. Intimidation, she said, was most likely introduced and may have played a part in swaying voter’s minds.

Intimidation is something this mother of four is used to. After being replaced as Liberia’s finance minister following a 1980 coup, Johnson Sirleaf took a job with Citicorp in Kenya. Five years later, then-President Samuel Doe, under pressure from the United States and other creditors, issued a new constitution that allowed the return of political parties outlawed since the coup. Johnson Sirleaf returned to Liberia and formed a political party for the 1985 general election. During this time, while at a public speech in Philadelphia, she badmouthed the Liberian government.

Word got back to Doe.

"While en route to Liberia," she said, "Doe’s entourage was waiting for me at the airport. I was put under house arrest and jailed, that day. I was charged with sedition, sent to a military tribunal, declared guilty, and sentenced to 10 years hard labor."

The international community, including members of the Kennedy School, came to her defense. Many, including 20,000 Liberian women, wrote letters demanding her release. Eventually, the U.S. Congress said it would cut off all aid if Liberia’s political prisoners were not discharged. Johnson Sirleaf ended up serving two months.

She immediately went back into politics. Amazingly, while she was in prison, she was elected as a senator for her party. However, she refused the seat, saying the election was fraudulent. If her party had won, she rationalized, the party should also have won the presidency. While contesting the results, there was an attempted coup by one of Doe’s military colleagues.

"So, I ended up back in jail with all of the other political leaders," she said. "We were charged with treason. Again, because of public pressure, everyone was granted amnesty and I ended up serving seven months."

This time, she wasn’t able to head immediately back into the political ring.

"When I came out," she said, "I had to sleep in different places every night. My life was at risk. Frankly, many people died during this period. It’s a miracle that I was not killed. Eventually, the harassment got to be so much that I left the country by means that no one knows (and she will reveal, she says, only if she writes a book)."

Fleeing Liberia, she came to New York and worked on an African development project at the United Nations. When the calls came to return to the political sphere in Liberia, she hesitated.

"Then I realized something clearly," she says, explaining her decision not only to return, but also to run for the presidency, "Taylor had the decks stacked in his favor and was positioned to win. The country deserved an alternative."

Today, while running an NGO as well as an African venture capital fund, she is gearing up for the next election. And, as she says with a smile, she continues to "take issue with the government even after the other parties have gone away."