Liberia probes warlord’s election fraud claim

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (L), flanked by former warlord Prince Johnson, greets supporters in Monrovia on November 6, 2011.  By Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (L), flanked by former warlord Prince Johnson, greets supporters in Monrovia on November 6, 2011. By Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)






MONROVIA (AFP) – The Liberian senate announced on Friday an investigation into claims by a former warlord that he colluded with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to commit election fraud.

Prince Johnson told a radio station last week that during 2011 legislative polls he persuaded Sirleaf to instruct the election commission to declare a candidate winner before the votes had been counted.

Johnson said Sirleaf agreed to the scheme, which made the former rebel leader’s candidate a lawmaker in a tight-run vote in Nimba, the county for which he is a senator, in return for his backing her second term as president.

“The Liberian senate deems it necessary to question Senator Prince Johnson about recent comments made,” Gbehzogar Findly, president of the Liberian senate, told reporters.

Sirleaf has not responded to the claim but James Fromoyan, who was in charge of the election commission at the time, has denied that any fraud took place.

“Senator Johnson is lying. There was no point in time where he and I or Madam Sirleaf ever discussed that,” Fromoyan said.

The senate said the results of the investigation would be made public.

Johnson was elected senator of Nimba county in 2005.

He came third in the 2011 presidential vote behind soccer star turned politician George Weah and Sirleaf, who went on to win a second term.

Johnson became known for gruesome acts during Liberia’s successive civil wars between 1989 and 2003, which devastated the west African country and left some 250,000 dead.

In 1990 he was filmed sipping a beer as his men tortured ousted president Samuel Doe, cutting off his ears and eventually killing him.