Cheers of a crowd fired as football star George Weah was sworn in as president of Liberia on Monday, completing the country’s first transition between democratically-elected leaders since 1944.
Weah, who took over from Nobel laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who over 12 years steered the country away from the trauma of a civil war, was sworn in by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Francis Korkpor, at a packed sports stadium near the capital, Monrovia.
The presidents of Gabon, Ghana and Sierra Leone, along with friends and fellow African football stars, including Cameroonian legend Samuel Eto’o, watched as he took the historic oath of office. also, Crowds queued kilometres away from the venue, singing, dancing and waving the Liberian flag as they waited for their hero, who rose from the slums of Monrovia to the nation’s highest office.
According to Weah, “I have spent many years of my life in stadiums, but today is a feeling like no other,” he thanked Sirleaf saying she laid the foundation on which the country now stands in peace.
He said his first priorities, would be to root out corruption and pay civil servants “a living wage,” and encourage the private sector, urging the public to show solidarity for the tasks that lay ahead. “United, we are certain to succeed as a nation, divided we are certain to fall,”
Weah promised to bring jobs and prosperity to the country.
