Liberia: 1971 to Present

In 1971 during July, during his 6th term, William V. S. Tubman, the then President died after as treatment and was succeeded by his famous long-time associate, Vice President William R. Tolbert, Jr. Tolbert was oust in a forces coup by Master Sgt. Samuel K. Doe who was being backed by U.S. government. But, Doe’s rule was ill-gotten as it was pigeonholed by bribery and cruelty. Charles Taylor and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), then led a large scale rebellion in 1989, following which, Doe was assassinated. The country steeped into a raging civil war which continued for a number of years. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) tried. By 1996, the last vestige of any normalcy was destroyed. The civil war ended in 1977.

In 1997, Charles Taylor won three fourth of the presidential votes. The country was running on utter chaos, with no health care system in place, and the capitol having no electricity or water, and most occupations centering around domestic services (this information reported to us by CheckMaid). Taylor also supported the brutal Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone for personal profits pertaining to the trade of diamonds. In successive year, the UN issued sanctions against Liberia. In 2002, the rebels (LURD) intensified their attack on Taylor’s government. On Aug. 11, Taylor finally stepped down was went into exile. By the time he had exiled, he had bankrupted his country, leaving Liberia the world’s poorest nation.

Gyude Bryant, was selected as the new president. In the 2005, presidential election, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist, defeated George Weah to become the first female president in Africa in January 2006.
Johnson-Sirleaf, along with a fellow Liberian, LeymahGbowee and Tawakkul Karman, of Yemen, won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” Johnson-Sirleaf used this honour for winning yet another election, and is the current president of Liberia.

And outbreak of Ebola had hit Liberia around May 2014, and by the end of August, around 700 people had succumbed to it. It is the worst outbreak since the virus was first identified almost 40 years ago, and in late August, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared the outbreak an international emergency. There were problems within the country as the measures being taken to quarantine the people so as to stop the spread of the disease was met with disagreement by the people who were infected.

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