Liberian President to Deliver 2008 Kennedy School Commencement Address
by Nik Steinberg on February 12, 2008 in HKS News
Ellen Johnshon Sirleaf
A 1971 graduate of the MPA program, Johnson Sirleaf said, “It is always a pleasure to return to the Kennedy School, which brings back fond memories, and to have an opportunity to share views and experiences with the students.”
Johnson Sirleaf has led Liberia’s recovery from a devastating civil war during which 200,000 people were killed, the HIV/AIDS rate quadrupled and child soldiers numbered in the thousands.
Elected in 2005, she inherited a country that, for the most part, was without running water, electricity or garbage collection. Less than 50 doctors served a population of 3 million. Most schools had been closed for over a decade.
“You’d have to be crazy to want to take on that job,” said Molly Kinder (MPA/ID2), who worked for Johnson Sirleaf’s administration last summer.
It is a job that Johnson Sirleaf, whose persistence has earned her the nickname of the “Iron Lady,” has tackled with an unlikely combination of candor and optimism.
“Few countries have been as decimated as ours,” the president told the U.S. Congress last March, but she vowed that Liberia would prove, “that democracy can work, even under the most challenging conditions.”
In addition to vigorously lobbying nations and international institutions for support, Johnson Sirleaf has also reached out to individuals, calling on Liberians in exile and foreign nationals alike to “roll up their sleeves” and take part in the country’s rebuilding effort.
“We need you there, too,” Johnson Sirleaf told a packed HKS Forum in September 2006. “You can come to help us to solve problems. We need professionals and people with skills coming to help.”
Kinder was in the audience that night and was so moved by the president’s words that she immediately started looking for a way to intern in Liberia. She wasn’t alone. A total of seven HKS students worked in the administration last summer, when Kinder interned with the Ministry of Finance.
HKS Dean David Ellwood said, “President Johnson Sirleaf exemplifies public service through her persistent efforts on behalf of her country. Her vision and commitment are an inspiration to us all, and it is a true honor to call her one of our own.”
Johnson Sirleaf came to office after a decades-long political career whose ups and downs traced the violent contours of Liberia’s history.
She began her career in the Ministry of Finance in the 1970s, a position she held until a military coup by Samuel Doe unseated the administration she served. When Doe executed the president and more than a dozen of his cabinet members, Johnson Sirleaf fled the country.
She returned in 1985 to run for the Senate, but her hopes dissolved when she was imprisoned for criticizing President Doe. She barely escaped assault before going into to exile again.
In her time abroad, Johnson Sirleaf held various posts in the private and international sectors, serving as Citibank’s chief executive in Africa and the Africa Director at the United Nations Development Program.
She returned to Liberia in 1997 to run for president against Charles Taylor, a rebel who had overthrown Doe. Despite the widespread corruption and repression of Taylor’s rule, she won only 10 percent of the vote. Her victory would come nearly a decade later, when she defeated a Liberian soccer star, George Weah, in a runoff to become the continent’s first elected woman leader.
Asked to evaluate the first two years of Johnson Sirleaf’s presidency, Prof. Robert Rotberg, Director of the Belfer Center’s Program on Intrastate Conflict, Conflict Prevention and Conflict Resolution, said she has begun to address Liberia’s many agricultural, education, health and infrastructural problems.
“She has energized the bureaucracy and motivated citizens,” Rotberg said. “But she has not yet had the time to work miracles in a country badly destroyed morally as well as physically.”
Johnson Sirleaf’s time to work miracles is tight. A grandmother who will turn 70 this year, she has already said that she will not run for a second term, leaving less than four years to implement her ambitious turnaround. Time is also running out for the UN’s 15,000-member peacekeeping force in Liberia, which is already beginning to draw down its presence.
But if anyone can turn the country around, Kinder says, it is the “Iron Lady,” who she says “is applying everything an HKS student would want a government to do.”
Written by Nik Steinberg · Filed Under HKS News
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