Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is poised to become Africa's first elected female president after early results indicated that the banker and economist has a commanding lead over George Weah, the former footballer, in Liberia's first elections since emerging from civil war.

Liberia's National Elections Commission said today that Ms Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist and former finance minister, had 57.9 per cent of the vote after 80 per cent of the ballots collected in Tuesday's election had been counted. Mr Weah had 42.1 per cent.

The run-off vote between Ms Johnson-Sirleaf, 66, and Mr Weah, 39, marks the culmination of Liberia's first free elections since the end of the country's 14-year civil war in 2003. In the first round of voting, Mr Weah, known to his supporters as "King George" won 28 per cent of the vote to Ms Johnson-Sirleaf's 20 per cent.

But, speaking at his headquarters today, Mr Weah complained of irregularities in the election. Holding 39 ballots that he alleged were fraudulently placed for Ms Johnson-Sirleaf, Mr Weah said: "The world is saying this election was free and fair, which was not true."

On Tuesday, Alan Doss, head of the UN Mission in Liberia, declared the vote, which was overseen by hundreds of international observers and protected by 15,000 UN peacekeeping troops and police, "peaceful and transparent".

The National Elections Commission said today it had received Mr Weah's complaint and would begin an investigation.

Ms Johnson-Sirleaf's camp, by contrast, remained quiet but elated, unwilling to declare victory.

"We are optimistic, we don’t want to pre-empt what the international observers are going to say. We are not going to prematurely declare victory until the numbers tell us we have won," said Morris Dukley, a spokesman for Ms Johnson-Sirleaf’s campaign.

If confirmed as President, Ms Johnson-Sirleaf will become Liberia's first elected leader since Charles Taylor, a US-educated warlord, won an intimidatory election in 1997.

Mr Taylor was forced into exile in Nigeria in 2003 after rebel groups, funded by Liberia's neighbours, closed in on Monrovia and President Bush ordered him to leave. Mr Taylor has been indicted by the UN for war crimes for conscripting boys and girls under the age of 15 into the Liberian army.

Liberia's heavily-policed election campaign, in which 1.2 million of the country's population of 3.5 million registered to vote, pitted its most-famous son against one of its most highly-qualified politicians.

Mr Weah, who won the FIFA World Player of the Year award in 1995 when playing for the Italian club AC Milan, has enormous support among Liberia's young and urban population but his critics complain that he has no experience of government and a huge, playboy entourage.

Ms Johnson-Sirleaf, dubbed "The Iron Lady", has drawn attention to her long career in the UN, World Bank and Citibank as proof of her ability to govern Liberia. But her previous experience as finance minister in Mr Taylor's regime has counted both for and against her. Opponents say she will always be tainted by her association with the brutality of the country's civil war, which killed 200,000 people.

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