Liberia’s new president Joseph Boakai had to be helped away from the podium after he paused twice during his inauguration speech.<\/p>\n
He had already been speaking for around 30 minutes when it became clear that he was having difficulty talking, the BBC reported.<\/p>\n
Boakai who was surrounded by his aides and members of the executive protection service was escorted from the ceremony at the Capitol Building, which is the seat of the legislature.<\/p>\n
The ceremony has been adjourned prematurely.<\/p>\n
The 79-year-old was sworn in as Liberia\u2019s oldest president amid rumours about his poor health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liberia’s new president Joseph Boakai had to be helped away from the podium after he paused twice during his inauguration speech. He had already been speaking for around 30 minutes when it became clear that he was having difficulty talking, the BBC reported. Boakai who was surrounded by his aides and members of the executive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"BBC","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,27],"tags":[1453],"class_list":["post-10620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-joseph-boakai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}