EX-FOOTBALL STAR GEORGE WEAH BECOMES LIBERIA'S PRESIDENT...

The former AC Milan and world football star George Weah has won Liberia’s presidential election, defeating the vice-president, Joseph Boakai, in a runoff with 61.5% of the vote.

Thursday’s announcement by the country’s election commission chair, Jerome Korkoyah, means Weah will succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Liberia’s president next month, after an election fraught with accusations of fraud and irregularities. It will be the country’s first democratic transition since 1944 and follows two devastating civil wars.

The commission said Weah had taken 61.5% of the vote, based on 98.1% of ballots cast.

Spontaneous celebrations erupted in the capital, Monrovia, a Weah stronghold. Supporters danced, clapped and sang “Olé, olé, olé” outside the electoral commission’s offices as the results were read out.

Weah, a national sporting hero, topped the first round of voting in October with 38.4% but failed to win the 50% necessary to avoid a runoff. Boakai came second with 28.8%.

The runoff was delayed twice after several parties took their allegations of malpractice to the supreme court , but it finally took place with a low turnout on 26 December.

Weah, 51, is the only African to be Fifa’s world player of the year or to have won the Ballon d’Or for Europe’s best player. At the time, Nelson Mandela called him the “pride of Africa”.

Weah played for Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan in the 1990s before moving to England late in his career for spells at Chelsea and Manchester City.

His was already an inspirational story to a generation of Africans: he grew up in Clara Town, a poor suburb of Monrovia, and played football across the river in West Point, Liberia’s biggest informal settlement, where he still has a large fanbase. Many see his becoming president as a fitting next chapter in the rags-to-riches fairytale and one that gives them hope.

Weah’s road to the presidency has been long. He lost to Sirleaf, the first female elected head of state in Africa, in 2005, and then, as running-mate to William Tubman, he lost again in 2011.

Weah’s running-mate is Jewel Howard-Taylor, the ex-wife of the former president and warlord Charles Taylor, who is serving a 50-year sentence for war crimes in a prison in Durham, in the UK.

Howard-Taylor is a respected and powerful senator, but her links to her former husband, including her promise this year to bring back the agenda of his party, has caused much criticism.

Boakai is Sirleaf’s deputy, but some of the blame for his failure has been attributed to his boss’s refusal to support his candidacy or campaign on his behalf. Sirleaf has stayed quiet on who she wanted to succeed her.