Polls open for Liberian run-off vote
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says she hopes for a peaceful outcome in Liberia’s runoff election on November 8. She spoke to a crowd of supporters on October 15, 2011 outside offices of her party on the outskirts of Monrovia that had been set alight overnight in a suspected arson attack.
Polls opened for Liberia's presidential run-off election Tuesday, after at least one protester was shot dead and several wounded during a protest rally a day earlier.
Few people were voting in the capital Monrovia, which stood in contrast to the first round poll that drew long queues.
The Liberian government insisted the poll, in which President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is seeking a second term, would go ahead as scheduled despite the unrest.
Read more on GlobalPost: Liberia – Election riots turn deadly
There were angry scenes in Monrovia on Monday, after hundreds of people gathered for a march in support of a boycott of the vote by opposition candidate Winston Tubman, the BBC reported.
Tubman cited voter irregularities in the first-round vote, but international observers said it had been free and fair.
Liberia’s election commission urged Liberians to cast their ballots in the runoff, which the BBC said would be a “tainted victory” for Sirleaf unless voter turnout was high.
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