Liberia heading for presidential run-off election

James Fromoyan Liberia National Electoral Commission (NEC)

Liberia heading for presidential run-off election

Liberia may be heading for a run-off presidential election as none of the 16 presidential candidates pulled a clear majority from the 97 per cent of results announced.

The latest results announced on Sunday by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) indicated that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of the Unity Party had garnered 44 percent of the total votes.

The result

A copy of the result made available to newsmen indicated that Johnson-Sirleaf, who took an early lead, obtained 511,796 votes representing 44 percent of the total votes.  

According to the commission, the total vote collated was 951,902.

The leading opposition, Winston Tubman of the Congress for Democratic Change, had 374,610 out of the total votes cast, representing 32 percent of the votes.

A former warlord, Prince Yomi Johnson of National Union for Democratic
Progress maintained his third position with 136,819 votes, representing 11.8 percent of the votes.
 
The Chairman of the Electoral Commission, James Fromoyan, said that voter turnout was 71.4 percent, out of the 1.8 million people that registered in January and February.

So far the results for 4,311 polling stations had been announced out of the 4,457 polling stations.

According to the commission, more results would be announced on Monday

NAN/ Adekusibe/Ekata