Liberia laureates: Gbowee attacks Sirleaf on corruption

BBC News, 8 October 2012

Leymah Gbowee (l) said Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (r) had not done
enough to ease poverty

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Liberia's president has not done enough to tackle corruption, says her fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee.

Ms Gbowee, a peace activist, shared last year's prize with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Yemen's Tawakul Karman.

She asked why Mrs Sirleaf's sons had been given lucrative jobs and said she was resigning from the reconciliation commission.

Mrs Sirleaf became Africa's first female elected head of state in 2006.

She was re-elected last year - just days after being awarded the Nobel prize.

"What has changed?" said Ms Gbowee.

"Her sons are on the board of oil companies and one is the deputy governor of the central bank. The gap between the rich and poor is growing. You are either rich or dirt poor, there's no middle class," she told the AFP news agency.

She was speaking in Paris, where she is promoting the French edition of her book Mighty Be Our Powers.

"I feel I have been a disappointment to myself and Liberia. Not speaking is as bad as being part of the system. Some may say I am a coward but the opportunity to speak out has come here," she said.

In August, President Sirleaf suspended her son, Charles, as central bank deputy governor for failing to declare his assets.

Another son, Fumba, is head of the National Security Agency, while a third, Robert, is a senior adviser and chairman of the state-owned National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL).

President Sirleaf won the first elections in Liberia since the end of a 14-year civil war.

But Ms Gbowee criticised her for not doing enough to ease poverty.

"In her first term she developed infrastructure. But what good is infrastructure if people don't have enough to eat?" she said.

"Development in a land of hungry, angry people is nothing."

During Liberia's conflict, Ms Gbowee mobilised women across ethnic and religious lines to campaign for peace and encouraged them to participate in elections.

In 2003 she led a march through the capital, Monrovia, demanding an end to the rape of women by soldiers.

The Nobel Committee said she had "worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war".