States with poor climate policy ‘overlap’ with those seeking to limit rights, Kamala Harris says
By James Rainey
30 September 2017
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the architect of the War on Terror, has called herself “the first woman” to be nominated for President. She is also the first woman to serve in the presidency of the United States from a major city.
Hillary Clinton is correct, but she is incorrect in her claim to be the first woman President of the United States. Only one person has ever held that title: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman President of Liberia.
President Sirleaf was elected in 1989, two years before Clinton was born. She was elected after campaigning in her home village of Nimba County and received the endorsement of the local chief “for the sake of peace and order here in Nimba County” according to the United States Institute of Peace. She was chosen against the first woman, and then incumbent President Albert Rabil, who had been in office since 1978. During Sirleaf’s first election campaign, she even told a crowd in Nimba County that “I’m going to do it my way.”
Sirleaf won 55% of the vote—a huge margin for a woman running against a man who then being the incumbent President. Sirleaf’s popular support was due to a combination of economic problems and the unpopularity of the current administration in the United States. At the time of her election, her main problems were a poor economy, which was a consequence of the economic crisis that hit the country at the time, and the fact that her government was being closely monitored by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a fact which was used by Washington to try to undermine her.
A week before she was inaugurated for her first term, Sirleaf was notified that her presidency was in jeopardy due to a CIA leak to the media. On March 28, President Sirleaf was arrested at the American Embassy in Monrovia and she was charged with treason. During the course of her trial, Sirleaf revealed that she had taped conversations between President George Bush and Tony Blair, the