Liberia tense as opposition cries foul in presidential vote

even if the opposition boycotts the polls, fanning fears of new violence in the war-torn west African country.
“If the opposition wants to boycott the process, that will not stop the process,” Unity Party campaign director Musa Bility told AFP after the opposition on Saturday rejected as “flawed” provisional results of the October 11 vote placing Sirleaf in the lead.

“For us there will be a second round” between Sirleaf, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize co-winner, and former diplomat Winston Tubman of the Congress for Democratic Change, Bility said.
“It will be the CDC and the UP.”
In a joint statement Saturday, Liberia’s nine opposition parties declared the results “null and void,” said their agents would withdraw from the National Elections Commission and warned: “If the process continues we will not accept the results.”

The statement also claimed there was “a calculated and deliberate act by NEC to rig these elections in favour of President Johnson Sirleaf and the Unity Party.”
Sirleaf (72) was in the lead with nearly 45 percent of the vote, followed by Tubman with 31 percent and former warlord Prince Johnson on 11,2 percent in the latest results from 71 percent of the ballots.

The opposition stance sparked fears of a return to violence in a country still emerging from 14 years of back-to-back civil wars claiming a quarter of a million lives that finally ended in 2003.
The UN peacekeeping force MINUL, with some 8 000 troops, stepped up patrols in Monrovia, setting up new barriers and checkpoints in a bid to ward off disturbances ahead of an opposition “mass meeting” on yesterday. – AFP.