02:12 GMT 22nd October 2010
PRESIDENT LAURENT GBAGBO and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro have both appeared on live television with their voting cards to confirm elections will take place at the end of the month as scheduled.
Gbagbo had announced the date of the long delayed poll as October 31 during the country’s 50th anniversary celebrations in August, saying ‘My dearest pledge is to permit my countrymen to be able to express freely, on the occasion of the holding of the longawaited presidential elections, to choose out of full conscience whoever will lead the destiny after the crisis of our country.’ Hundreds of thousands of posters of the main candidates have also been printed.
Originally scheduled to be held in 2005, the poll has been delayed on a number of occasions because of procedural rows. Gbagbo, who was elected president in 2000 for a fiveyear mandate, was given a seventh successive year in power in November 2006 under a UN plan to find a political solution to the internal strife that plunged the country into civil war in 2002.
Once a haven of stability and prosperity for more than three decades, Cote d’Ivoire became a divided nation when Muslim northerner Alassane Ouattara was banned from the presidential election – “won” by Gbagbo – in 2000 because his mother was apparently from Burkina Faso.
But the first stirrings of ethnic tensions began in 1999 in the southwestern part of the country when nearly 20,000 Burkinabes were expelled from the country even though some had lived in Cote d’Ivoire for many decades.
This followed a downturn in the economy exacerbated when the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank froze the disbursement of loans in retaliation for corruption and mismanagement by the Ivorian government.
In September 2002 a mutiny of troops turned into a full-scale war by northern Muslims who felt they were being discriminated against. Thousands were killed in the conflict. The country has been divided ever since with the government controlling the south and the New Forces, which led the rebellion, holding the north, although the civil war lasted only one year.
The president appointed rebel leader Guillaume Soro prime minister in March 2007 weeks after the former arch rivals signed a power-sharing peace deal that guaranteed Soro’s New Forces a role in a transitional government, and elections to be held within 10 months. But the date has been repeatedly delayed amid disputes over disarmament and voter registration.
Gbagbo, who dissolved the electoral commission in February following another row over the voter list, has been accused of playing a delay tactic before having full confidence in winning the polls.
Luc, a taxi driver who would not give his full name, told NewsAfrica he was happy that the elections would at last take place but said he no longer trusted politicians. ‘We’re fed up of demagogues. Politicians promise things when they are not sitting on the chair, once seated, the reality is something else,’ he added.
Annie Nguessant, a marketing student said, ‘My dad lost his job since the war began in 2002 and our family situation has gone from bad to worse.Why has it taken so long for us to go to vote? I do not know what else to say to express my suffering.’
A market vendor who also wished to remain anonymous remarked, ‘Other neighbouring countries like Burkina continue to provide support to help us but we still don’t seem to be able to manage. Tribal divisions continue to reinforce ethnic conflict that has been ripping the country apart for eight years.
It seems all parties are keen for the Cote d’Ivoire to get back on a normal footing. Production of the country’s main foreign exchange earners, coffee and cocoa, have yet to reach their pre-conflict levels, while the prevailing insecurity has led to an exodus of foreigners. The African Development Bank also moved its headquarters from Abidjan to Tunis soon after civil war broke out.
Among Gbagbo’s main rivals is Alassane Ouattara, whose exclusion from the elections sparked off the conflict. An economist by training, Ouattara, popularly known as “ADO”, served as prime minister between 1990 and 1993 under the country’s founding father Felix Houphouet-Boigny. He earned praise internationally for his prudent management of the economy but his tight spending regime antagonised senior figures in the then ruling party and civil servants.
After Houphouet-Boigny’s death in 1993, Henri Konan Bedie succeeded to the presidency despite Ouattara’s protestations. Ouattara resigned as prime minister and went to the IMF in Washington but said he would return home and run for the presidency on behalf of the opposition RDR. It was Bedie who first raised the concept of “Ivoirité”.
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