Ellen Sirleaf Interview (page: 3 / 8) Nobel Prize for Peace	Print Interview

You opposed the regime of Samuel Doe for so long. What finally became of President Doe?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: During the time when Mr. Taylor was invading the country -- and then you had a splinter group with his group, and you had a Prince Johnson faction, and they were all assaulting the capital, so to speak -- each one wanted to take power. They were able to persuade Doe to leave his mansion, where he had been holed up for quite some time, and to come out, and he was taken captive by the Prince Johnson group, one of the warlords, and he was killed. Well, he was tortured. It was a terrible, terrible thing. I saw the video of it and it's really dehumanized. The way he was killed was really -- as bad as he was, nobody deserves that.

They filmed it deliberately to instill apprehension?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: I guess to send a message to everybody else. But these people were... it's difficult for me to explain their thinking and their motivation, frankly.

They mutilated him, didn't they?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Yeah.

You were, at first, supportive of Taylor, is that right?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Oh yes.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Many Liberians, we had been mounting a campaign against Doe for years, without any success. When Taylor started, his was supposed to be a movement, and all the right things about fighting against dictatorship and bringing back justice and equity into the society. So it wasn't until several months into his campaign, into his movement, that we realized that his motives were selfish, and that he was there to take power and to enrich himself. As a matter of fact, some of our colleagues from the '85 elections who went back into his area for safety and for protection ended up being killed. That's when we started to distance from him.

And after that you campaigned for his removal?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Oh yeah. Sure. From the time we began to distance from him, we mounted a campaign against him. We had a huge campaign to get him out of power.

That took great courage, I would think, on your part, knowing what he is capable of.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Well, we had to do it.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had already invested a lot of my life in challenging. I had challenged the Doe regime. To a certain extent I even challenged the Tolbert regime, which I was a part of. So taking on Taylor was like carrying on an unfinished business. The unfinished business was really to be able to get the dictators out of the country. To get into a system where people had a choice. To start the process of reconstruction and renewal -- a process that is just starting now, but with a legacy that is very, very difficult. With violence implanted into the value system, and lawlessness being a part, it's difficult, but it's a process that we had to embark on. And even though making that transition is difficult, and going to be difficult, but it's the only way to move the country on to the right track, the track that we're beginning to move along.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Could you tell us about building the Unity Party?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: We organized -- there was a party already there from '85 -- it was a part of what we called the Grand Coalition. At that time I was a member of another party that we formed called the Liberian Action Party. I was part of that. So when I came back to run on the Unity Party ticket -- this was in the 1997 elections, when Charles Taylor was making a bid following a small cessation of the war -- we then built a party around me and my candidacy, and had a very strong showing, we thought. Didn't have as much money as he, and didn't have access to the media or to the kinds of resources that enabled us to travel around the country, so Mr. Taylor declared himself the winner.

He declared himself the winner?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: The official results gave him a large percentage, with me as a distant second. But after that, we began to build a party. Of course, I had to leave again. I had to go into exile. I came back and was back and forth several times, based upon when I thought it was safe to come, and when I felt it was unsafe to be there and had to quickly run out. But this time I settled right in Abidjan, where I could keep my finger on the political pulse, and use the proximity of being close to home to begin to do advocacy among the African leaders to point out that the situation in the country was not good, that we were headed for disaster. Mounted, along with others, an international effort to bring pressure on Taylor. And finally, of course, we all ended up in Accra for the peace talks. And once I came back then, of course, we mobilized the party to prepare ourselves for the 2005 elections.

Ellen Sirleaf Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8