Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) candidate Winston Tubman has pulled out of Tuesday’s vote, alleging fraud.

Nobel Peace laureate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s Africa’s first elected female head of state, is running for another term.

She was first elected after Liberia’s first post-war election in 2005.

These are the first elections organized by Liberians since the 14-year conflict ended. The previous ones were run by the large UN peacekeeping mission.

Justice Minister Christiana Tah told the BBC that security would be stepped up for the elections following the violence and that an investigation would be opened.

She could not confirm the number of casualties. Some CDC officials say four people died.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World, a coproduction of The BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. There were classes and gunfire in the Liberian capitol Monrovia in advance of tomorrow’s presidential run-off. The incumbent, Nobel laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is ahead in the polls. Her opponent, Winston Tubman, has called for his supporters to boycott the election. Reporter Bonnie Allen was at a demonstration in Monrovia earlier today when the shooting broke out.

Bonnie Allen: I’m here at the compound of Winston Tubman as the emergency response unit begin to storm the compound. [sound of gunfire] Liberian national police are firing into the crowd with live bullets. These are not the rubber bullets that are usually used to control crowds in this kind of situation.

[person speaking in Bassa]

Allen: Tubman supporters have pulled out yet another dead body covered in blood. A fight has just broken out between United Nations peacekeepers and Liberian national police who are clearly using excessive force.

Werman: Bonnie Allen is now on the line with us from Monrovia. You were witnessing some pretty dramatic and unexpected stuff earlier today, Bonnie. How are things now on the streets of Monrovia?

Allen: Well, tensions are certainly high in Liberia’s capitol Monrovia tonight. The UN peacekeepers are deployed across the city. Liberia’s riot police are on standby. There are some reports of looting and, just generally, there’s a sense of disbelief. This is some of the worst violence Liberia has seen since it’s civil war and, given the fact that it comes on the eve of the presidential election tomorrow, it’s disheartening for many. It’s also a rather shocking turn of events because Liberia has been applauded in recent weeks for it’s peaceful election period. For the fact that it’s organizing it’s own election and, then, when the president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the Nobel Peace Prize…it all just seems to be unraveling.

Werman: These are the first elections since Liberia’s long civil war ended…elections to be organized by Liberians. As you pointed out they seemed to be going pretty well. How did it go sour though?

Allen: Well there is a long history of disputes over the free and fair elections in Liberia. Back in 2005 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won. She was hailed as the first democratically elected female in Africa but she was actually second in the first round behind George Weah. Then she won in the second round and there are a lot of supporters of George Weah the famous soccer star who said he was cheated. So here we are 6 years later. George Weah’s back on the ticket, this time as a vice president next to Winston Tubman. And Winston Tubman is a Harvard trained lawyer and he’s said that there are voting irregularities that there were problems with the ballot counting. That elections commission was biased and that Sirleaf used government revenues to campaign. So there are a lot of allegations. There haven’t really been a lot of credible evidence provided. But the supporters are people who feel that they were robbed before and so they’re obviously very susceptible to the message.

Werman: Now, if the shooting today came from the authorities, does that mean that they were under order of the president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to shoot.

Allen: That’s not clear. The Minister of Justice said that it will be under investigation. I’m not sure what that means for tomorrow but a spokesman for the National Elections Commission confirmed that the runoff will go ahead tomorrow although the turnout is in question because it looks like one candidate has boycotted and none of his supporters will show up. Also, today, when I was speaking to the supporters of Tubman, it seemed like they were furious that people were shot and killed. Many of them were issuing very serious warnings that they would burn down polling stations tomorrow. So I would say the country will be on very high alert tomorrow.

Werman: Reporter Bonnie Allen speaking with us from Monrovia, Liberia. Bonnie, thanks so much.

Allen: You’re welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• Flu.gov

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: We turn now to Europe. Health authorities there are also encouraging swine flu vaccination especially for people in high risk groups. But there’s a lot of skepticism among patients and health workers.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: The German Government is urging everyone to get a swine flu vaccination.  But according to a recent poll just 20% of Germans say they’ll seek it out. One reason many give for not getting the vaccine is that the H1N1 virus has so far turned out to be relatively mild.   Misha Ude is a medical worker in Hamburg.  She says she sees swine flu patients daily and isn’t worried about catching the disease.

MISHA UDE: [In German]

GERRY HADDEN: She says I’m a nurse in a hospital.  In the last month we’ve had about 30 swine flu cases come in.  They get checked out and go right back home.  It’s nothing serious.   Many health experts in the U.S. would disagree with that statement.  Yet in Germany among doctors concerned about any serious swine flu outbreak remains muted.  Frank Ulrich Montgomery is Vice President of the German Medical Association. He says fears of swine flu are overblown.

FRANK ULRICH: I think it is just an ordinary normal flu and if we hadn’t had the pandemia planning, if we hadn’t had the most alarming reports from Mexico and the U.S. at the beginning, we probably would never have done so much about this disease.

HADDEN: Montgomery says his group only recommends the new vaccines to high risk patients.   He says preliminary tests have shown the vaccine to be effective, but he wants to see more research on the possible risks before recommending the vaccine to the public at large.

MONTGOMERY: You have to test very large numbers of persons to find out the real risk and the long-term risk of vaccinations. Therefore, more important for us is to balance out the risk of vaccination with the risk of the disease itself.

HADDEN: Montgomery says his skepticism is shared by doctors across Europe.  In Spain, leading swine flue Epidemiologist Antoni Trilla says he hears the same thing from physicians, but he doesn’t share their doubts.

ANTONI TRILLA: There is some sort of non-scientific reasoning in saying that this is not a safe enough vaccine.  I don’t think there is strong evidence for saying that.

HADDEN: But on the other hand Trilla does think U.S. health officials are pushing the vaccine a little harder than necessary.  For instance, when it comes to healthy children.

TRILLA: We don’t recommend now to have the vaccine to healthy young kids. It’s quite different from the United States where they are pushing forward the vaccination of the younger people.  Here we only restrict the vaccine to the higher risk.

HADDEN: Last month the E.U. described three groups as high risk, health care workers, pregnant women, and anyone over six months with pre-existing conditions, such as lung or cardiovascular disease.  The fact that otherwise healthy people are not on that priority list might explain why the European public isn’t rushing out to get vaccinated.  Trilla predicts that if the disease doesn’t become more severe over the flu season, by next spring Europe will be awash in unused doses of swine flu vaccine.   For The World I’m Gerry Hadden in Barcelona.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.