Some news reports sometimes seize your attention, to the point where you cannot go over them in haste then close your eyes and move on to other news without commenting on or thinking about writing about them. Last week, the media outlets carried reports about the decision of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to suspend the work of 46 governmental officials. This decision might have been ordinary had the latter not included her son who refused – along with the remaining officials - to reveal his possessions to the anti-corruption committee in the country. The Liberian president's son, Charles Sirleaf, is the deputy governor of the Bank of Liberia, and the list of those who were temporarily suspended features the names of the general prosecutor, the heads of governmental committees and anti-AIDS committees, and the general consul in New York. In Arab countries, corruption is spreading, integrity is being violated, poverty and unemployment rates are rising and hundreds are being killed without the rulers even blinking, as though nothing was happening on the ground. Moreover, I do not recall that any Arab leader in modern times ever transferred one of his sons or relatives to trial on charges of corruption or for having violated the law, as it was done by Sirleaf! The majority of the Arab populations might not know anything about Liberia (in the western part of Africa), except for famous football player George Weah who reaped numerous football awards and was dubbed African Player of the Century. Coincidently, George Weah had run in the presidential elections against Sirleaf during the 2005 general elections but lost, without this ever putting him down. He thus became involved in humanitarian action in a poor state of around 4 million people! At the beginning of her second term, Sirleaf ordered all the governmental officials to reveal their wealth to help present a government managed transparently to the international community. Sirleaf did not assume the presidency because she came from a feudal or noble family, or over an American tank. She won in the 2005 elections which ended a 14-year civil war, and became president in 2006 as the first woman elected at the head of an African state in a democratic way. Last week, Sirleaf came 81st on the Forbes List of the 100 most influential women in the world. She also earned a Nobel Peace Prize last year, along with her fellow LiberianLima Gbowee and Yemeni national Tawakkul Karman. She holds a master's degree in economics and public policy from the American Harvard University. During the last century, there was one “Iron Lady," i.e. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990). And at the beginning of the current century, in the presence of many female political figures, the president of Liberia was an “Iron Lady" due to her strong positions and her confident and clear policies, which are often compared to Thatcher's. The United Nations economic studies indicate that the African Continent is still the most corrupt area in the world. Moreover, according to the World Bank, UNDP and Transparency International studies, the states in the continent failed to deal with and deter corruption, especially at the level of the governments. Hence, it is hoped that Sirleaf's positive “epidemic" will at least reach the western African states and that their rulers will be affected by what she has done. Sirleaf was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth and did not reach the presidency easily. She went through difficult junctures, thus surviving the civil war massacres in her country, imprisonment and arbitrary arrests. However, she is a woman concerned about her country, its forests and habits. It was said by Muhammad Ould al-Muna (Al-Ittihad newspaper, January 2012) following her reelection that during the coup which toppled President William Tolbert at the hands of Lieutenant Samuel Doe who belonged to the indigenous Krahn ethnic group, Sirleaf survived the massacre in which Tolbert and a number of his ministers were killed. She then collaborated with the new regime that toppled the Americo-Liberian ruling institution (controlling minority), headed the Liberian Bank for Development and Investments, then left to the United States and became involved in activities aiming at forming an organization opposed to Doe's regime. She worked at the World Bank as an economic expert, then lived in Nairobi as the vice president of the Citi Bank Africa office. In the context of her opposition of Doe's regime, Sirleaf returned to the country in 1985 to participate in the presidential elections as candidate to the vice president's post. However, she was placed on house arrest and was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of instigating strife, and was only released under international pressures. Sirleaf's first presidential term witnessed serious attempts to fix the economy and fight corruption. She also established a reconciliation committee and attempted to instate peace, lower the debt, enhance women's status and introduce institutional reforms which continue to be admired by the international community. Personally, I tried to study her course via her autobiographic book entitled “This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President." This seems to be the biography of an “Iron Lady" worth reading and writing about, in a continent suffering from corruption, poverty, crime and disease. 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