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While she has been widely praised for inspiring women who aspire to the highest office in Africa, in general, and Liberia, in particular, still, at 71 and with the economy of her country ramshackle and corruption at the executive branch of government showing no remarkable signs of abatement, it is definitely time for the Harvard-schooled economist to peaceably exit the scene while her dignity is still fairly intact. Alas, like a typical continental African premier who is beginning to deeply relish the imperial trappings of executive power, the Liberian leader and Africa's first female president has just announced that she is placing her name on the ballot, once again, for the presidency next year. Like the recently deposed Nigerien (as in Niger) premier, Mr. Mamadou Tandja, the overriding pretext for her intended reelection contest is bizarrely predicated on the raging global economic slump, which Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf claims has peevishly preempted her purported ambition of leaving an enviable legacy for her people. �I want to be sure [that] I leave a legacy behind and [that] I made a difference,� the Liberian leader recently told the New York Times (See �The Nation Full of Strong Women� 3/5/10). For one, if Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, after 5 years in elective office still believes that she has yet to make the desired, or remarkable, impact on the lives of her countrymen and women, then precisely what emboldens her to believe that she could register such difference as she personally craves within the next half-decade? More so, when the very global economic recession she �bitterly� blames for having effectively scuttled her official agenda continues to simmer with no signs of any significant abatement? And, of course, to the latter must be quickly added the fact that like her fellow countrymen and women, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf has absolutely no influence, whatsoever, over the global economic trend both presently and within the next half-decade when she hopes to have notched, legacy-wise, the desired impact in the lives of ordinary Liberians. We must also point out, for the benefit of her evidently aging memory bank, that the poll that brought her into executive leadership of her country was not exactly without its own peculiarities. Needless to say, back in 2005, Mr. Kofi Annan, then-United Nations secretary-general, and other sub-regional leaders had to step in to ensure that Liberia did not relapse into its war-time abject state of immitigable carnage and outright barbarism. And what is more, the Liberian leader reportedly told her country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) not too long ago that while exiled in the United States of America, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf had personally donated $ 10,000 (Ten-Thousand U.S. Dollars) towards the cause of the anti-Doe rebel group led by the now criminally-indicted Mr. Charles Taylor, himself a former Liberian strongman. Predictably, the donor now claims that she had intended her patently politically-motivated donation to be exclusively used for humanitarian services; but, of course, at the time of the aforesaid donation, there was no credible or established mechanism to ensure that such gifts, indeed, went for their intended purposes. In other words, in the personality of Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, we are not dealing exactly with a clean or innocent politician, her expedient and deft deployment of her femininity and primal maternal instincts as a distinguishing mark of her leadership notwithstanding. Furthermore, harping on such tawdry and simplistic gender-stereotypes as �Women [having] stronger commitment and attitude to work� is unlikely to make her reelection bid any easier. For, needless to say, Liberians are a hardy lot who readily appreciate the stark difference between cheap rhetoric and the reality of things on the ground, as it were, since Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf assumed stewardship of their country. And to some observable extent, she may be quite right in claiming that: �In every time and every place I've worked, wherever there has been a scandal, wherever there has been [any] indication of impropriety, it's always been men.� Still, it goes without saying that what the former United Nations' Development Program (UNDP) executive conveniently fails to add is that in nearly every one of such scandals as she appears to gloat over, it is the women associated with the male players involved � either privately or professionally � who either instigated such scandals or induced them. Anyway, as of this writing (3/7/10), the New York Times was reporting that Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been pressuring President Johnson-Sirleaf against running for reelection. Not quite long ago, for instance, the TRC urged the summary and effective proscription of dozens of other Liberian citizens, including Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, from being entrusted with public office, largely predicated on the flagrant or criminally culpable roles played by the accused in the 14-year civil war that brought Liberia to the brink of anomie and unfettered mayhem, culminating in the brutal massacre of tens of thousands of citizens and residents, including this writer's maternal uncle and twelve other relatives. With the country's unemployment rate hovering around 85 percent, amidst an unacceptably high rate of illiteracy in a population 60 percent of which is composed largely of youths under 25 years old, it is time for Liberia to be represented at the helm of its affairs by one who is young and closer to the grim experiences of its youthful majority, but astute, achievement-oriented and mature and amply equipped to handle such critical spheres of national endeavor as the creation of jobs and human-service facilities as schools, health centers, motorable roadways and a productive and worthwhile agricultural industry. As for the evidently and scandalously overweening ambitions of 71-year-old President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, that can comfortably wait for another lifetime, Providence willing. For now, the war-battered and traumatized people of Liberia are in dire need of a leader who is far more concerned about putting food on the table, Tylenol in the medicine cabinet, providing good schools for their children and grandchildren, and worthwhile employment opportunities and social security, than parochially worrying about her/his legacy. In deciding to go for a second term of office, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf has likely decided to borrow a page or two from the Ghanaian political almanac, where two-term presidencies appear fast to becoming the order of national affairs. But even among the Ghanaian people, as well as their leadership, whom Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf appears to specially admire, as reality begins to set in, the hitherto invariably sophomoric political culture of the two-term presidency mania of yesteryear may be fast becoming a historical relic.