Bloody past may claim Liberian President

Africa's first female President was propelled to power on a tide of democratic passion from voters eager to turn the page on the years of civil carnage.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was hailed as the woman whose level head and calm, almost grandmotherly, demeanour would help Liberia quietly rebuild and prosper. Now the bloody past is coming back to haunt her.

The country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week recommended that the President be barred from holding public office because of her wartime conduct. The move has shocked the West African nation, where Johnson-Sirleaf still enjoys huge popularity, and speculation is already swirling that this is not a case of Liberia's leading lady being unmasked as a villain, but rather Machiavellian political manoeuvring ahead of the 2011 elections.

"She has her enemies and her rivals, and they have been sufficiently influential to get this recommendation included," said Stephen Ellis, a veteran Liberia watcher and the author of The Mask of Anarchy. "She has a major political fight looming now. If the recommendation is taken up by Parliament and becomes law, then she's in real trouble."

The House of Representatives will meet today to consider the TRC report, which has been three years in the making. Its most contentious aspect is the name listed at No 12 on the List of Persons Recommended for Public Sanctions. Johnson-Sirleaf is one of 50 people accused of being the "financiers and political leaders of the different warring factions".

She has made no secret of the fact that she initially supported the 1989 Christmas Eve rebellion by Charles Taylor, giving him food, visiting him at his hideouts and donating US$10,000 to his cause.

Like much of the political elite at the time, she wanted an end to the eight-year reign of terror of Samuel Doe, a sergeant turned coup leader turned dictator. And like much of the political elite, within months she realised she had made a serious miscalculation: Taylor was not a puppet to be controlled. Liberia and the wider West African region would end up being convulsed by back-to-back wars for more than a decade.

The TRC began its hearings in 2006, inviting victims and perpetrators to retell their versions of events during the devastating war years, in a system modelled on the post-apartheid reconciliation efforts in South Africa.

- INDEPENDENT