Pressure builds on Liberia's pioneer
'Iron Lady' tries to restore nation
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff | May 14, 2006

HARBEL, Liberia -- The country's celebrated new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, faced a crowd of rubber tree tappers, who at first cheered heartily.

Under a broiling sun, the first democratically elected female president in Africa told the several thousand workers at a Firestone Plantation site earlier this month that she would deliver better education for their children and improve living conditions for their families. But she also said that after negotiating with US-based Firestone, she could not force the company to pay millions of dollars in a pay dispute dating to 1994.

The mood turned. Many booed. One shouted: ''Not good, Ellen! We want our money!"

''You can't satisfy everybody," she told the crowd.

Just four months into her six-year term, Johnson Sirleaf, a 66-year-old Harvard-educated economist, is winning acclaim abroad: She's been to see President Bush at the White House and last week traveled to Chicago to appear on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show."

But in her West African homeland, she is learning that turning around one of the most devastated countries in the world will be much tougher, and make her more unpopular, than she imagined.

''It's easy when you are outside looking in than when you get in and face the reality," she said in an interview in her sparsely decorated executive office a day before the Firestone appearance.

Fourteen years of war destroyed Liberia's infrastructure, leaving it with no electricity, running water, or sewage systems. It also gave rise to a warlord culture of killing and stealing public money and resources, led most notoriously by former president Charles Taylor. Taylor is in jail in Sierra Leone, but still can call upon many armed loyalists in Liberia, raising the threat of renewed civil strife.