This is an article by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
When Liberians got their first chance to vote in multiparty elections, old women walked from their villages in the scorching heat to stand in long lines at the polling places. My party's symbol at the time was the rooster, and I remember the crowds lining the road to cluck and flap their elbows as a sign of support. Anyone who saw their enthusiasm, like me, could have no doubt that Liberians yearn for democracy.
That was 1985. Sadly, the military stuffed ballot boxes and burned ballots, and Samuel Doe, a sergeant who had seized power in a 1980 coup, declared himself the winner. Liberians' hopes were dashed by American recognition of the results. It is hard to imagine that Chester Crocker, the Reagan administration's assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was not being deeply ironic when he praised Doe at the time for claiming only 51 percent of the vote. It was, he said, "unheard of in the rest of Africa, where incumbent rulers normally claim victories of 95 to 100 percent."
I have been pondering that betrayal recently as I attend peace talks for my troubled country here in Accra. Founded by emancipated American slaves in 1847 as a beacon of democracy for Africa, Liberia has degenerated into a violent free-for-all. As the battle rages for our capital, Monrovia, politics has been reduced to an extended street fight among gun-toting boys. Had the United States respected the will of Liberia's voters in 1985, we would not be in the desperate straits we are today. The failure to challenge Doe's electoral fraud discredited the democratic process and paved the way for an increasingly brutal competition for power.
But we can still dare to hope. President Charles Taylor, who displays an almost psychopathic will to power and has been indicted by a United Nations-backed tribunal for war crimes in Sierra Leone, says he will step down from office today. West African states have sent peacekeepers and the United States is considering a military role. The peace talks include not just the government and the two rebel factions, but also 18 political parties and five civil society organizations.
After six frustrating weeks in Accra, I can say that the peace talks are flawed and unstructured. The process is under the direction of a mediation team from the Economic Community of West African States, and meetings take place haphazardly in ad hoc groups, with only the occasional plenary. Yet I remain optimistic that an agreement will emerge on a future transitional government. I have to, because the talks are our only way out.
Unfortunately, the United States has steadily downgraded its diplomatic presence at the Accra discussions and is now represented by a relatively junior official. This is a mistake. As the Bush administration should already have learned in Iraq, military intervention is often the easy part. The political process that follows -- call it ''nation building'' if you will -- can be much tougher.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, recently appointed Jacques Klein as his special representative for Liberia. Because he is a former United States Foreign Service officer and a retired major general in the United States Air Force, he is seen among the Liberian parties as a virtual American envoy. Senior State Department officials are also paying increasingly frequent visits. But that is not good enough. The Bush administration should immediately dispatch a full-scale mediation team to Accra to see the process through.
If the administration does not get the politics right, any military intervention will be doomed to failure. Up to now, Washington's policy has been largely reactive. Liberia has fundamental problems to tackle if it is ever to live up to its founders' dreams of freedom and political participation. First, we need to restore hope and confidence to people subjected to despair, particularly to the thousands of young boys and girls who have been press-ganged into combat. Then we need to rebuild our institutions to ensure accountability and transparency; restructure the economic system so that it is no longer dominated by a small elite; conduct a national dialogue; and then hold elections that bring to an end our tragic tradition of rule by strongmen.
We need Washington's help to construct a credible transitional government that is interested in more than its own greed. After the betrayal of 1985, the United States owes us that much.
Source: New York Times
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