“At the conclusion of Liberia’s 2005 elections, which itself was a culmination of years of an excruciatingly slow, fitful and bloody transition from interminable low-intensity warfare to relative peace, one of the country’s leading citizens made the following points: The ending of the war has not ended the bitterness and soothed the anguish. A multitude of tendencies are emerging, and not all are supportive of the creation of a sense of nationhood and the development of democratic institutions.
Nonetheless, the absence of the oligarchy, and of the warlords, does provide opportunities for Liberians to construct a new governance paradigm and to craft new institutional arrangements through processes of constitutional choice.”
