Liberia Post-Election

It has been one week since Liberia's general elections, only the second since the country emerged from 14 years of civil war. For the first time in a week, the streets are quiet. I hear no party revelers or campaign music. The quiet is surprising after so many days of tens of thousands of people pushing through the streets in jubilation for their candidates. It's also surprising because the elections are not yet over. Every day since last Tuesday's vote local radio stations have broadcast the National Elections Commission's preliminary results.  At the appointed hour, the employees at Women's Campaign International pull chairs around a transistor radio, silent as the commissioners go through a lengthy procession of names, party affiliations and percentage of votes garnered. Our driver, Alvin, turns up the volume in the car. The commissioners' voices ring out from taxi windows on traffic-clogged Broad Street. Today the commission announced it was finished tabulating preliminary results. There will be a runoff for the presidency between the incumbent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and fellow Harvard alum Winston Tubman. Former rebel leader Prince Johnson has thrown his considerable weight -- he came in third, with 11.4 percent of the vote -- behind Johnson Sirleaf, whom he has called both a friend and the primary orchestrator of Liberia's long war.