Wanted: Honest ministers
17/11/2005 22:07  - (SA)  

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Liberia vote hearing 'chaotic' Liberia opens vote fraud hearings Sirleaf takes 59.4% of vote Liberia calm after elections Liberia a source of inspiration Liberian vote 'free and fair' Liberia poll 'a job well done'

Monrovia - Presumptive president-elect Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Thursday she is looking for a few honest men, and women, to form a government able to tackle the challenge of rebuilding war-torn Liberia.

"There are going to be three basic requirements: the requirement of competence; the requirement of honesty; and the requirement of the regard and protection of human rights," she told reporters in an interview at her home.

The woman most likely to be Africa's first elected female head of state added: "Anyone who has not met those particular three conditions will not find a place in the government".

Sirleaf, 67, who beat footballer George Weah in a November 8 second round, is waiting for certified results due on November 23.

To lead effectively, she will have to reach out not only to her long-time opponents, of whom there are many, but also to Weah and her 20 other rivals during the electoral contest.

"Ellen Sirleaf needs to form a broad-based government of national unity as she has indicated," Winsley Nanka, a Liberian political analyst and journalist in the United States, told AFP in an e-mail.

"She needs to look at the competent people within the various political parties whose core competencies could be of use.

Except for a few, she really does not owe much political debt to the party leaders."

"We have committed to a government of inclusion that will cut across party lines, ethnic lines, religious lines," said Sirleaf.

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