Political veteran Joseph Boakai is close to victory in Liberia’s presidential race against incumbent George Weah.
Gatekeepers News reports that former vice president Boakai on Friday garnered 50.89 percent of votes cast, with Weah on 49.11 percent.
This is with more than 99.5 percent of the polling stations tallied following Tuesday’s second-round poll, said electoral commission head Davidetta Browne Lansanah.
Meanwhile, Lansanah said the results have been frozen at a large proportion of the 25 remaining polling stations, due to an abnormal turnout or a number of votes exceeding the number of registered voters.
Political expert Abdullah Kiatamba said it looked certain that former football great Weah could not make up the gap.
Kiatamba told AFP, “The reality at this moment is that, given the numbers, it is literally impossible to reverse the gain.
“To do so it means the CDC (Weah’s party) will need to win numbers that are four or five times the current trend.”
A political sciences lecturer at the University of Liberia, Thomas Kaydor also agreed.
Kaydor said,“Even if you add up all the votes from the 25 remaining polling stations, George Weah cannot win.”
According to Friday’s figure, Boakai was 28,000 votes ahead of Weah.
Just over 1.6 million ballots have been counted. Around 2.4 million Liberians were eligible to vote on Tuesday, however, no turnout figures have been released.
