President faces perennial rivals as long-delayed Ivorian polls planned

Abidjan, Monday

With posters stuck up all over Abidjan and rallies planned, the presidential election campaign began at the weekend in Cote d’Ivoire after a decade of crisis and the division of the country by a rebellion.
A few hours after the campaign officially started posters on the main roads of the economic capital praised the merits of the three principal candidates out of a field of 14.

President Laurent Gbagbo, former president Henri Konan Bedie, and former prime minister Alassane Ouattara will confront each other for the first time after dominating Ivorian politics for years.

The election in the onetime economic giant of west Africa is due to take place on October 31, after many hold-ups and postponements of the vote, and rows over who is entitled to cast a ballot.

“The peace is won, now for development. Forwards!” proclaimed a poster for Mr Gbagbo, who has made peace with rebels of the New Forces (FN) who launched a foiled coup against him in 2002 and still hold the northern part of the country.

“Our experience at the service of youth,” promises Konan Bedie, wearing a polo neck and with his thumb raised, standing next to a young man with a very modern skyscraper in the background. He also pledges to put his experience “at the service of women.”

Surrounded by market women, office employees or workers on a building site, Mr Alassane Dramane Ouattara, known as “ADO”, proposes his “solutions” with a big smile, such as creating “a million jobs” for young people.

Mr Gbagbo launched his campaign at a rally at Man in the west, while Mr Ouattara used a grand hotel in Abidjan. Mr Bedie, who says he has been campaigning for two years, planned no major rally.

Constantly postponed since Mr Gbagbo’s mandate ended in 2005, the election is supposed to bring a historic end to the division of Cote d’Ivoire between north and south and former rebels and loyalists.

Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaore, the mediator in the Ivorian crisis, has issued a “solemn appeal” for “an electoral campaign without violence.”

The UN special representative in Cote d’Ivoire, Youn-jin Choi, has urged the candidates to show “maturity” and the president of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI), Mr Youssouf Bakayoko, has called for the “greatest wisdom during this sensitive time.”

In the central town of Bouake, base of the FN, there were few posters to be seen.

Mr Eric N’Da, a resident in his 40s, expressed doubts to AFP that the poll will take place on October 31, “because the distribution of national identity cards is going slowly.”

Among the many difficult tasks to be confronted, apart from providing security for the elections, is the distribution of more than 5.7 million identity cards to the electorate.

The operation was launched last week and has for the moment enabled more than a million ID cards to be handed out in Abidjan while it is gaining momentum in the interior of the country, according to sources close to Guillaume Soro, leader of the FN and prime minister since peace accords were signed in 2007.

The papers are highly symbolic. ID cards have not been handed out for years in Cote d’Ivoire, a country that attracted a lot of immigrants from the region to its cocoa and cotton plantations, and where there was violence in the 1990s over the issue of Ivorian nationality.

The UN Security Council on Friday extended arms and diamonds trade embargoes against Cote d’Ivoire, but said they could be eased or lifted if the presidential election goes well.

The council extended the embargoes for six months, and promised a review of within three months of free elections “with a view to possibly modifying, lifting or maintaining the sanctions regime, in accordance with progress in the peace process”. (AFP)