Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has won Liberia's presidential vote, becoming Africa's first elected woman head of state and embarking on a six-year mission to lift the war-torn country towards prosperity and reconciliation.
"I thank the Liberian people for performing their legal duty and I am happy to be the next president of Liberia," Sirleaf, dressed in a burgundy robe and headscarf, told reporters after a ceremony on Wednesday certifying the Nov. 8 results at the Centennial Pavillion in downtown Monrovia.
The Harvard-educated banker, 67, earned 59.4 percent of votes cast to best football hero George Weah in a run-off aimed to help Liberia turn the page on decades of lawlessness and corruption after back-to-back civil wars since 1989.
"Consequently, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is hereby declared the winner of the run-off election," National Elections Commission chairwoman Frances Johnson Morris said.
She will be inaugurated on Jan. 16, as will the new bicameral legislature for Africa's oldest independent republic, settled in 1847 by freed American slaves.
"This is a historic moment not only for Liberia but for the continent as a whole," said UN special envoy Alan Doss, attending the ceremony that was ringed with tight UN and national security.
Weah has alleged massive vote fraud in the Nov. 8 polls, and has launched a complaint process with the NEC that his party, the Congress for Democratic Change, has vowed to take to the Supreme Court.
The elections were declared peaceful and credible by a host of international observers, and pressure has been mounting on Weah -- even from among his supporters, including two former warlords who endorsed his candidacy -- to concede in the interests of peace.
Niger President Mamadou Tandja, current head of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States, added his voice on Monday to the African chorus praising the elections and urging the dispute be resolved quickly and peacefully.
French President Jacques Chirac was among the first to extend his congratulations, releasing a public message hailing the writing of a "new page in Liberia's political history."
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