FORMER international football star George Weah was poised to win Liberia’s presidency with a significant lead and more than 98 percent of votes counted, according to provisional results released Thursday, as the West African nation prepared for its first democratic transfer of power in more than 70 years.

Weah, voted the best player on the planet in 1995 and played for Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, Milan, Chelsea, Manchester City and Marseille during his time in Europe, received 61.5 percent of ballots counted and Vice President Joseph Boakai received 38.5 percent, the National Elections Commission said.

As Weah’s supporters erupted in celebration, final results were expected Friday.

My fellow Liberians, I deeply feel the emotion of all the nation. I measure the importance and the responsibility of the immense task which I embrace today. Change is on. — George Weah (@GeorgeWeahOff) December 28, 2017

The 51-year-old Weah, a FIFA World Player of the Year and senator who entered politics after his 2002 retirement from soccer, also led the first round of voting in October but didn’t receive enough votes to win outright over the 73-year-old Boakai, who has been vice president for 12 years.

They were vying to replace Africa’s first female president, Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has served two terms. She led the country’s recovery from back-to-back civil wars and saw it through an Ebola outbreak that killed nearly 5,000 Liberians in 2014-2015. Sirleaf didn’t publicly support either candidate.

This is the first time in more than 70 years the nation founded by freed American slaves is seeing one democratically elected government hand power to another. The new president is expected to take office in January. Neither Weah nor Boakai made any public comment Thursday night after the first results were announced.

Results from four of Liberia’s 15 countries were yet to be released. Though voter turnout for Tuesday’s runoff was low, Weah drew support from the younger generation, which makes up a majority of Liberia’s population of 4.6 million people.

“I am so glad and happy that we now have our president who will bring a change,” said one supporter, Love Norrision, as honking vehicles lined up outside the elections commission headquarters. “We are young people and have suffered in this country for so long.” The commission said 56 percent of the country’s 2.2 million registered voters cast ballots in the runoff, which was contested twice in court amid claims of irregularities, with its original Nov. 7 date delayed.

Weah led the ticket for a coalition party, the Congress for Democratic Change, with Jewel Howard-Taylor as his vice presidential running mate. She is the ex- wife of imprisoned former warlord and President Charles Taylor, which raised concerns among some Liberians.

Weah ran in the country’s last two elections, winning the first round of the 2005 vote that eventually went to Sirleaf.

The Washington-based National Democratic Institute, which observed Tuesday’s runoff, called it peaceful and commended the elections commission for “notable improvements since the Oct. 10 polls.” “I am proud of Liberians, who have come from crisis to democracy and have shown themselves to be a model of peace and stability in the region,” said election observer and Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan.

This was Liberia’s first independently run election since the end of its civil wars. The United Nations has helped to oversee past votes.

Former international football star George Weah, who has won Liberia’s presidential run-off, follows several celebrities who have achieved the top job in their countries.

However, only one sportsman -- Hungary’s double Olympic fencing champion Pal Schmitt -- has previously become president.

Here are some precedents:

- US: Reagan and Trump -

B movie actor Ronald Reagan, who played in Hollywood for more than two decades, was the first cinema star to enter the high echelons of US politics. He was elected governor of California in 1966 before starting the first of two terms as president in 1981.

Several decades later, in January 2017, real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump entered the White House without any political, diplomatic or military experience. The 45th president of the United States, whose surprise election shocked the world, hosted the TV show “The Apprentice” between 2004 and 2015.

Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who succeeded Trump as host of the reality show, also made the leap from cinema to politics. The bodybuilder and action hero was California’s Republican governor from 2003 to 2011.

- Estrada in the Philippines -

All-action tough guy movie star Joseph Estrada, who played in around 100 films, entered politics in 1969 and was elected president of the Philippines in 1998 where he remained until 2001. He was then detained for six years and convicted of plundering state coffers before winning a pardon in 2007.

- Martelly in Haiti -

In Haiti popular carnival singer Michel Martelly -- known to the country’s youth as “Sweet Micky” -- won the April 2011 presidential election with more than 67 percent of votes.

- Morales in Guatemala -

Jimmy Morales, a former TV comic with no previous political experience who campaigned on anti-corruption promises, was elected Guatemala’s president in October 2015. Also a cinema producer and TV personality, Morales is famous for his 2007 film “A President in a Sombrero” in which he plays a country bumpkin cowboy named Neto who nearly gets elected president by accident.

- Europe: Schmitt and Landsbergis -

After his election by parliament in June 2010, Pal Schmitt, a double Olympic gold medal epee winner in 1968 and 1972, became the fourth president of democratic Hungary. Schmitt entered politics as secretary general of the Hungarian Olympic Committee in the 1980s. He was toppled from the presidency in April 2012 by a plagiarism scandal.

In Lithuania musician Vytautas Landsbergis led his country to independence from the Soviet Union and was in 1990 elected as president.

- Writers, boxer -

Others have leapt from careers in literature to politics, like Senegal’s poet and author Leopold Sedar Senghor, who became the republic’s first president upon independence in 1960, and Vaclav Havel who in 1989 won post-communist Czechoslovakia’s first presidential election.

Well away from the electoral process, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada, who seized power in 1971 in a coup, was a former heavyweight boxing champion from 1951 to 1960.