Thirty heads of state will attend Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s $1.2 million (9 million euro) inauguration on January 18, Foreign Minister Toga McIntosh said Thursday.
«As I speak to you now, I have received word from 30 heads of state confirming their participation,» he told a news conference.
The opposition Congress for Democratic Change — which refuses to accept Sirleaf’s win after it pulled out of the November 8 presidential run-off claiming fraud — is planning a protest march on the day.
CDC presidential candidate Winston Tubman’s poll boycott plunged the nation into crisis during an election billed as an opportunity to cement a fragile democracy eight years after the end of a 14-year conflict that killed 250,000.
A protest march called by him on the eve of the election turned bloody as police opened fire on his supporters to disperse stone-throwers, killing up to four people.
Sirleaf, who won a joint Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in women’s rights, became the first democratically elected female president in Africa in 2005.