Despite the long-awaited announcement of an election date for 31 October, key issues remain unresolved. And while a younger generation grows impatient for change, the old has yet to give way to the new.
In a small house near Abidjan’s industrial quarter of Port Bouet, Ivorian intellectual and writer Venance Konan cuts to the heart of the matter. “If Gbagbo isn’t president of this country, then who will be?” he asks. “We are looking for a leader, but who will be our Moses?” It is a question asked by others, irrespective of sector or class, in a capital whose industrial strength might once have led it to be christened the ‘Paris of Africa’ but which is now stagnating amid an almost 10-year-old crisis.
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of independence and after years of postponements, the government announced in August that 31 October would be the new date for national elections. The country has been in a state of suspended animation since President Laurent Gbagbo’s mandate expired in 2005. But the stakes for politicians and ordinary Ivorians in a nation divided into a government-held south and rebel-controlled north is no longer just a question of when elections will be held. With 70% of the population aged between 18 to 30 years old and poverty levels rising to 49% in 2008 from 10% in 1985, the game has changed.
Appealing to the largely urban youth is the key challenge faced by the three men who have dominated Ivorian politics since 1993. Having spent 11 years opposing the kleptocratic post-independence leader Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Gbagbo was seen as a Moses himself. Now his opponents emphasise his apparent refusal or inability to organise elections.
The opposition Rassemblement des Houphouétistes pour la Démocratie et la Paix (RHDP) coalition is a marriage of convenience between four opposition parties. The two main opposition challengers, Henri Konan Bédié and Alassane Dramane Ouattara, face charges of overstaying in the political arena. The Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) and Rassemblement des Républicains (RDR) have revolved around their iconic personalities for over a decade – almost two in Bédié’s case.
Not-peace, not-war
Aged 65, 76 and 68 respectively, Gbagbo, Bédié and Ouattara’s refusal to engage in any public dialogue or pass the baton to a new generation speaks almost as loudly as the internal party bickering that has spilled into the public domain in recent months.
A poll organised last year by French pollsters TNS Sofres on behalf of the ruling Front Populaire Ivorien showed that Gbagbo was the country’s most popular politician but that even he could not garner enough support to win a simple majority in the first round of the presidential polls. One year on, impatience continues to mount, and the top politicians seem unable to mobilise support from outside of their bases. That means that formation of political alliances in the second round will be of crucial importance.
The battleground is to a large extent ethnic, with the nationalistic ideology of Ivoirité serving to cleave the country into northern and southern zones. Each of the major parties has its base of support: Gbagbo commands the Bété vote in the West, Bédié’s PDCI relies on the Baoulé of the south, centre and east, while Ouattara represents northern ethnic groups and the numerous immigrants from Burkina Faso and Mali who are ethnically related to them. Questions surrounding the nationality of those migrants was one of the main drivers of the situation of ‘not-peace, not-war’ that has divided the country between north and south since 2002.
S: theafricareport.com
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