Liberians to Pick Between Weah and Boakai in Nov. 14 Runoff Vote

(Bloomberg) -- Liberian leader George Weah and Joseph Boakai, a former vice president, will contest a runoff election on Nov. 14 after this month’s vote failed to produce an outright winner of the nation’s top job.

Most Read from Bloomberg

• Controversial Chip in Huawei Phone Produced on ASML Machine

• Trump Signals Support for Johnson’s Bid to Become House Speaker

• China Developer Country Garden Deemed in Default on Dollar Bond for First Time

• Nasdaq 100 Falls 2% as Bond Yields Rise; Oil Gains: Markets Wrap

• China Signals Zero Tolerance for Sharp Economic Slowdown With Rare Steps

Weah, 57, and Baokai, 78, garnered the most support of the 20 candidates who contested the first round but neither secured a majority, results released by the National Elections Commission showed.

“With the results of the 10 October polls showing that no presidential ticket obtained the 50% plus one vote, a runoff election is hereby declared,” Davidetta Browne Lansanah, the commission’s chairperson, told reporters in Monrovia, the capital.

Weah secured 43.8% of the ballots cast and Boakai 43.4%, Lansanah said. About 79% of the 2.4 million registered voters cast their ballots, she said.

A former AC Milan star and FIFA World Player of the Year, Weah comfortably defeated Boaki in the 2017 runoff to win his first six-year term, but rising living costs and endemic corruption have eroded his support.

Fuel and food prices have been driven higher by the global pandemic and the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Inflation quickened to 12.4% in June, the highest in more than two years, before easing to 11.7% in August.

Graft remains endemic in Liberia — it ranks at 142nd out of 180 nations on advocacy group Transparency International’s annual corruption perceptions index. Last year, Weah accepted the resignations of three close allies after the US Treasury imposed sanctions on them after they were implicated in being party to dubious contracts and diverting public funds.

The incumbent has pledged to build roads and increase access to education, health care and electricity for the West African nation’s 5.4 million inhabitants if reelected. He’s also undertaken to create an enabling environment for business by cutting debt, curb the Liberian dollar’s depreciation against the US dollar and use fiscal and monetary policy to drive the inflation rate to below 10%.

Boakai, who served as deputy to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and has capitalized on widespread anti-Weah sentiment to build support, said he will improve the nation’s infrastructure and increase farm output.

Preliminary results from parliamentary elections held on the same day showed Weah’s ruling Coalition for Democratic Change won 25 seats in the 73-member House of Representatives. Boakai’s Unity Party took 11 seats, independent candidates grabbed 19 seats while other parties won 18 seats.

In the Senate race, the ruling coalition won six of the 15 contested seats, Unity Party won one seat, independents took six and two was won by other parties.

--With assistance from Mike Cohen.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

• Venezuela’s Primary Sweep Puts Maduro and Biden in the Hot Seat

• X, One Year Later: How Elon Musk Made a Mess of Twitter’s Business

• No One Understands Corporate Boycotts Like This Former Trump Researcher

• Lululemon’s Founder Is Racing to Cure the Rare Disease Destroying His Muscles

• Inflation Raging at 130% Is Pushing Argentina Down a Radical Path

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.