{"id":24979,"date":"2016-04-29T02:16:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T02:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/liberia-ex-footballer-george-weah-to-run-for\/"},"modified":"2016-04-29T02:16:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T02:16:28","slug":"liberia-ex-footballer-george-weah-to-run-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/liberia-ex-footballer-george-weah-to-run-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberia ex-footballer George Weah to run for president again"},"content":{"rendered":"

{The former international footballer George Weah will run for president of Liberia for a second time.
\n}<\/p>\n

He said he had the “vision” to transform the country.<\/p>\n

Mr Weah, who played for teams including Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Chelsea, was the highest-ranking African footballer in Fifa’s list of greatest players of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

His previous presidential bid, in 2005, was defeated by current president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.<\/p>\n

Her second term in office will end in 2017 and under the country’s constitution she cannot run again.<\/p>\n

During his football career, Mr Weah became a UN goodwill ambassador.<\/p>\n

Later he turned to politics. He is currently a senator for the western province of Montserrado, which includes the capital Monrovia.<\/p>\n

In 2011 he ran for vice-president under Winston Tubman but did not win.<\/p>\n

Mr Weah belongs to the opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) party.<\/p>\n

Announcing his presidential bid in Monrovia, he said he had been a “victim of poverty” like many of his supporters, and said he would boost vocational education.<\/p>\n

Anthem and portraits – Jonathan Paye-Layleh, BBC News, Monrovia<\/p>\n

Liberia’s national anthem was played before Mr Weah took to the stage.<\/p>\n

First, he held a moment of silence in memory of the thousands of people who died of Ebola.<\/p>\n

He told his crowd of supporters: “Our gathering here today is about the future of our country and our people.<\/p>\n

“In the last ten years our people have continued to live in abject poverty, education a mess, health delivery system a disaster, electricity and pipe-borne water elusive.”<\/p>\n

“Like many of you, I have been a victim of poverty,” he said. “There were times I didn’t have school fees.”<\/p>\n

A leading research organization has recently rated Mr Weah’s performance in the Senate as low.<\/p>\n

Party members from across Liberia presented a petition asking him to run, saying they believed he was the man “to solve Liberia’s numerous problems”.<\/p>\n

Some party members paraded up and down the sandy party headquarters, beneath giant portraits of Mr Weah.<\/p>\n

They sang: “George Weah is the man we want, George Weah is the man we want.”
\nMr Weah pledged to increase the national budget, work towards religious harmony, and support vocational education.<\/p>\n

To wild applause, he said: “God is with us, and hope is alive.”<\/p>\n

\"Mr<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{The former international footballer George Weah will run for president of Liberia for a second time. } He said he had the “vision” to transform the country. Mr Weah, who played for teams including Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Chelsea, was the highest-ranking African footballer in Fifa’s list of greatest players of the 20th century. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24979"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24979"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}