By Frank Sainworla, Jr. fsainworla@yahoo.com
Just weeks before her second and final six-year-term ends next January, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has on Wednesday promised to “retire from active politics” but says she “will remain active in society.”
Speaking in a special live interview on the state radio ELBC in Monrovia, Africa’s first elected female President said after her 12-year presidency, she will actively be involved in dealing with women issues.
The Liberian constitution limits to two the number of terms the president can run for, something the Liberian leader has said she’s committed to doing and ensuring she presides over an historic peaceful hand over of power from one elected president to another elected president for the first time in this West African state since1944.
When she first ran for the presidency in 2005, Sirleaf promised that she would only run for one term but later changed her mind and ran for a second term.
In her live radio interview on Tuesday, the 78-year-old Liberian leader also promised to live in this country when she retires from the presidency, though she has a lot of international job offers.
“I intend to stay in Liberia. Too many of our resources are transferred because too many of our human resources are abroad,” Sirleaf told the Director General of the Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS), Ledgerhood Rennie.
President Sirleaf, the immediate past Chair of the ECOWAS sub-regional grouping, explained that although she has to earn a living by doing some work abroad, she will not permanently stay abroad after leaving power next in January.
When asked what Liberian citizens will most remember her for she said, “they will remember me for the progress made…The development I have sponsored.”
But Sirleaf was not pleased with the attitude of some Liberians who she said were engage in the habit of ‘denigrating their country’.
Meanwhile, the Liberian leader has declined to comment on the latest dramatic political situation in Zimbabwe that has seen the resignation of President Robert Mugabe under pressure from the military, his own ZANU-PF party and citizens after holding on to power for close to 40 years.
Sirleaf shied away from a direct question from the interviewer on the Mugabe saga apparently fearing that a response would be blown out of proportion in the media.
But when asked about the development of democracy in Africa, the Liberian President said Africa was indeed making progress in building democracy.
She cited the “significant strides” that are being made by women in African politics, although just a few women have managed to reach the top post of president.
Sirleaf however noted that much more women have managed to reach top posts in African government such as Vice President and at the level of parliament, particularly hailing Rwanda which has up to 60% of their officials being women.