By our Staff Reporter
More results fom the National Elections Commission continue to put the opposition Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) in the lead, but Liberia’s ruling Unity Party (UP) of the incumbent Vice President Joseph Boakai is expressing confidence of victory.
“As far as I’m concerned I know UP will win. I don’t settle down for second round,” Boakai told reporters in Monrovia on Friday. And he has called on his supporters to remain calm.
But in the second provisional results released by NEC on Friday, out of a total of 547,965 votes tallied so far, George Weah’s CDC got 204, 750 votes representing 39.6% followed by Boakai’s UP with 160,975 votes representing 31.1%.
Results tallied account for 33.71% a total number of 1,817 polling centers processed so far. There are over 5,390 polling centers with some 2.5 million registered voters in Tuesday’s election that was contested by 20 presidential candidates.
Liberty Party’s Charles Brumskine has accumulated 48,219 votes followed by former warlord now Senator Prince Johnson of the Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction (MDR), which has got 34,550 votes amounting to 4.8%.
Alexander Cumming’s Alternative National Congress ANC and the lone female presidential candidate Macdella Cooper of the Liberia Restoration Party (LRP) are trailing far behind in the votes tallied so far.
More results are coming into the NEC headquarters in Monrovia, and the commission’s Chairman Jerome Korkoya says further release of provisional results will follow. He said so far, only one of the Liberia’s 15 counties, River Gee in the southeast has entire results in.
Both the CDC and UP have said while all Liberians should wait for NEC to officially declare the winner in line with its constitutional authority, they were sure of victory.
As NEC released its second preliminary results on Friday, the Chairman of the ruling UP Wilmot Paye said, “We remain confident of the enormous prospects we have to ultimately win this election.”
Paye cautioned UP supporters “to refrain from insinuations that have the propensity to undermine the peace.”
Earlier on Thursday, CDC’s national campaign Chairman, Professor Wilson Tarpeh said from the data they received from their poll watchers at polling centers nation-wide, his party was sure of a first round victory.