"No Other Candidate Can Deliver What I can,” says Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

When she took the podium to speak, Ellen was in her best elements and delivered a poignant speech that her audience seemed to understand and relate to. Walking up and down the length of podium, rarely stopping to read her notes, she spoke about education, fairness, and good governance without going into a lecture none attacking any candidate. She sounded like a person poised to win. The verb was there, the stride was there and the speech was delivered on a stomp mode.

The UP candidate said “every platform’ offers great promises, well worded projects. ‘We are not coming here to promise you things we cannot deliver, what we can deliver is a government that will be accountable to you, a government that would put an end to the imperial president.” Continuing in the same mode, she added that the government under her leadership would wage another kind of war, “war on poverty, war to improve health care, war to improve education. We have to move this nation forward so that we can all be proud of what we are and who we are.”

Mrs. Sirleaf seemed very upbeat and the audience of students, faculty and university workers responded in kind. They could relate not only to what she was saying but also to her as a person. And it looked like she was enjoying herself tremendously. A colleague journalist who has followed her campaign almost everywhere and heard her speak on several occasions said that he had never seen “the Ol’ mom” speak and move like this.

Although she made some campaign promises, Mrs. Sirleaf was quick to say there was no magic wand to remove all the problems the country is facing. “It is going to be difficult and we all will have to work hard to make things happen.” Such a candid phrase touched the audience and many in the crowd stood up and cheered, as if to show their readiness for the task.