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Recent electoral dynamics and violence in Côte d Ivoire challenges ECOWAS to reinforce its efforts in the country.
Introduction
Côte d’Ivoire’s presidential election on 31 October 2020 marked the fifth presidential election held in the country since the death of the “
pere foundateur de la nation” (father of the nation), Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in 1993. The election was held in a tense political and volatile security atmosphere, driven by opposition protests against President Alassane Ouattara’s third-term candidacy, which was a breach of the 2016 constitution. The political contest among the political stakeholders also bordered on matters around the electoral code, the voter register, implementation of the constitutional reforms and the composition of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), which opposition parties denounced as non-inclusive, unbalanced and partisan.
Polls in Abidjan close and the counting of ballots begins
africanews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from africanews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Opposition parties led by two former presidents would today try to shake the grip of Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara in a parliamentary election, five months after a presidential vote that led to deadly unrest.
Former Ivorian president Henri Konan Bedie’s Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) and former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) both boycotted the presidential election last year, which Ouattara won in a landslide.
Eighty-five people died in violence around that election, although the situation has since cooled.
A faction of FPI loyal to Gbagbo and PDCI are fielding a joint list of candidates against Ouattara’s Rally of
February 2021
Criminal groups abducted hundreds in north west, while ethnic and regional tensions ran high in south amid farmer-herder conflict; meanwhile, tensions rose in south east between govt and Biafra secessionists. Criminal groups in Feb reportedly killed at least 112 and kidnapped over 450 people, mostly in Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto and Zamfara states (north west), but also in Niger state (Middle Belt). Notably, armed group 17 Feb abducted 42 students and school personnel in Niger state, released them 27 Feb; 26 Feb kidnapped 279 girls in Zamfara state. Meanwhile, Auwalun Daudawa, who masterminded Dec 2020 abduction of 344 students in Katsina state, 8 Feb laid down arms along with five of his troops. Amid rise in herder-farmer and intercommunal violence in south since Jan, clashes between ethnic Hausa and Fulani on one hand, and ethnic Yoruba on the other, early Feb killed two dozen people in Oyo state capital Ibadan (south west). Nobel laureate in literature Wole Soyinka 6 F
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ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said on Thursday he would seek re-election in October, formally accepting the ruling party’s nomination to be its candidate and defying opponents who say the constitution forbids a third term.
Ouattara, who has governed since 2011, said in March he would not run again. But his preferred successor, then-prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, died in July, leading the party to ask Ouattara to reconsider.
The election is seen as the greatest test yet of the tenuous stability achieved since a brief civil war in 2010 and 2011 killed about 3,000 people following Ouattara’s first election win.
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