Liberia Bans Election Rallies to Fight Ebola

UPDATE: Liberia court suspends ban on mass gatherings in Monrovia

REUTERS  By James Harding Giahyue                                                         Dec. 7, 2014                                                                                    

MONROVIA --Liberia's top court issued a stay on a government order banning public gatherings in the capital ahead of Senate elections next week that was imposed because electioneering risks spreading Ebola, Information Minister Lewis Brown said on Sunday.

Presiding Associate Justice Philip

On Monday, the court will hear a petition by civil society groups, prominent citizens and some political parties who seek a delay to the Senate elections, now set for Dec. 16, until Ebola is eradicated.

On Wednesday, the court will hear a separate petition by independent Senate candidate Robert Sirleaf, the son of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

issued the stay pending two Supreme Court hearings this week, Brown said.

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Earlier story:

NEW YORK TIMES by CLAIR MacDOUGALL and RICK GLADSTONE                                               Dec. 5,2014
MONROVIA, Liberia — President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Thursday banned all rallies and other mass gatherings in Monrovia before the senatorial election scheduled in less than two weeks, asserting that they risked worsening the spread of the Ebola outbreak.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia in Monrovia in October. She has banned mass gatherings linked to Senate elections. Credit John Moore/Getty Images

The president’s order also extended the ban to 30 days after the election. The order came just as Liberia appears to have made progress in slowing the disease, which has also severely afflicted neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone, and has spread to Mali.

Ebola has now sickened more than 17,200 people in the three worst-hit countries and killed more than 6,100, according to the latest data posted Thursday by the World Health Organization. Half the deaths have been in Liberia.

In issuing the crowd-control order, Ms. Johnson Sirleaf argued that large concentrations of people at election rallies — especially in the Monrovia area, where half the population of four million lives — were precisely the situations that could spawn new infections....

Most political parties, however, want the election to proceed.

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