An international soccer star, two former warlords and a Harvard-educated woman are among 22 candidates in Tuesday's election, vying to head a country founded by freed American slaves that was once counted among West Africa's most prosperous countries and now has 80 percent unemployment.

This first presidential election since fighting ended two years ago comes at a time when more and more African countries are shaking off the coups, dictatorships and misrule of the past and building democracies. A successful election in Liberia, a country still shell-shocked from a war that took 200,000 lives, would be a milestone for this new, peaceful trend.

''The most important thing for Liberia now is good leadership. It's the only thing that can save us,'' says Mohammed Tanja Kabbah, a 26-year-old security guard, articulating the hopes of most Liberians. ''The warriors told us they'd deliver us the future, but they brought us nothing.''

A transitional government led by businessman Gyude Bryant has ruled since 2003, when rebels shelled Monrovia, the capital, and ousted President Charles Taylor, himself a one-time insurgent leader who pioneered the use of child soldiers across West Africa and is now under indictment by a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal.

Since those dark days, business owners have spackled and painted over the bullet holes. Gone are the fighters who wore wigs and women's evening attire to frighten their foes. Nowadays they work at filling potholes in streets patrolled by some of the 15,000 U.N. troops in the Tennessee-sized country.

Entrepreneurs are here too; a new supermarket sells French-made goose-liver p‰té and super-premium Scotch.

But even bare necessities are beyond the means of many, and state-supplied electricity and water are nonexistent.

Disputes over Liberia's vast troves of precious gems, rubber trees and timber were at the heart of its two civil wars since 1989 - conflicts that left the country in ruins, its buildings smashed and nearly one third of its people huddling in relief camps.

There are no reliable polls, but the most closely watched candidates are George Weah, revered as the soccer star who put his country on the international sports map; lawyer Charles Brumskine; and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former Cabinet minister who has worked for the United Nations and the World Bank and was runner-up to Taylor in the last democratic election in 1997.

Also running are two of Taylor's rebel foes: Alhaji Kromah, who fought him in Liberia's first civil war, and Sekou Conneh, whose forces drove him into exile in the second war.

Some 1.3 million of Liberia's 3 million people have registered to vote in the elections for president and the U.S.-modeled Senate and House of Representatives.

So far, ''all indications are that this will be a free and fair election,'' says U.S. Ambassador Donald Booth.

Over 400 international monitors are in Liberia for the elections, which a single candidate must win with an absolute majority to forestall a second-round runoff between the two biggest votegetters.

Johnson-Sirleaf, 66, is favored by many who believe her Harvard degree in public administration, and her experience in international diplomacy and banking, are what the country needs.

Weah, on the other hand, is running as the people's candidate - a product of Monrovia's slum with little formal education. Some see him as the uniter who can inspire Liberia's more than 100,000 demobilized fighters to work for their country. His inexperience in government is seen as an asset by many, because he is untarnished by Liberia's class-ridden politics.

Tens of thousands marched on a main route outside Liberia's war-battered capital, Monrovia, on Saturday in support of Weah's candidacy, waving palm fronds and placards - including one reading ''George Weah is the Messiah.''