After surprisingly ordering the entire cabinet to take "administrative leave" in November (December 2010, the political scene), the president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, appointed a new cabinet within weeks-to little fanfare. After dismissing the cabinet, Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf left on official visits to Ghana and the US, and set about naming a new cabinet only two weeks later. Although it left the country without ministerial leaders for two weeks, the move was aimed at strengthening the government in the period leading up to elections in October 2011. The president emphasised the need for "a clean slate" in order to build the most effective team to contest the elections. Somewhat diluting this narrative, while she named replacements to some key positions, many officials retained their existing jobs, including Kofi Woods as minister of public works, Augustine Ngafua as minister of finance, Amara Konneh as minister for planning and economic affairs, Brownie Samukai as minister of defence and Florence Chenoweth as minister of agriculture.

The new appointees include the ministers of foreign affairs, post and telecommunications, internal affairs, labour and the national investment commission, but many of these have either served the government previously in different capacities or occupied other positions in the country's political scene. The new chairman of the national investment commission, Natty Davis, served as chief of protocol in the transitional government and was closely associated with the former interim president, Amos Sawyer, and the new foreign affairs minster, Toga McIntosh Gayewea, a confidant of the president, was briefly minister of planning immediately after the 2005 elections, before leaving to work for the World Bank. The appointment as internal affairs minister of Harrison Kahnwea from Nimba county, who, like Mr Gayewea, worked with the former president Charles Taylor, highlights the efforts by Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf to strengthen her political base in Nimba (the largest county after Montserrado by population), where her support is currently very limited.

The new labour minister, Jeremiah Sulunteh, replaces a former solicitor-general, lawyer and political activist, Tiawon Gongloe, who is one of the few former ministers to have publicly criticised the president's decision to replace the cabinet. Mr Gongloe reportedly refused an offer to become minister of post and telecommunications on the basis that he lacks suitable qualifications for that position, and suggested that the president's mass dismissal reflected an autocratic style of governing, in keeping with "imperial presidencies" of the past. He also claimed that the move inadvertently strengthened the impression of the pervasive nature of corruption in the country, undermining the integrity of those who were honest and diligent. Mr Gongloe's comments highlight the extent to which the action of the president was motivated by political calculation as much as administrative efficiency. The new minister for post and telecommunications is Frederick Norkeh, who, unlike most of the other appointees, is relatively new to the political landscape.