Ivory Coast referendum dismissed as fraudulent
An official of Ivory Coast's Independent Electoral Commission (Cei) arrange the results following the counting of the votes for a referendum on a new constitution, at a Cei office in Abidjan on October 31, 2016. PHOTO | SIA KAMBOU | NATION MEDIA GROUP.
What you need to know:
President Alassane Ouattara said the changes were necessary to help end years of instability linked to disputes over national identity while critics labelled the vote an attempt to line up a successor for when his term ends in 2020.
The “Yes” camp won 93 per cent of votes cast in Sunday’s constitutional referendum, but most eligible voters stayed at home, following the opposition call to boycott, with the official turnout rate put at just over 42 per cent.
ABIDJAN, Wednesday
An opposition-boycotted referendum to change Ivory Coast's constitution has easily passed, electoral officials said yesterday, but opponents swiftly dismissed the vote as fraudulent.
President Alassane Ouattara said the changes were necessary to help end years of instability linked to disputes over national identity while critics labelled the vote an attempt to line up a successor for when his term ends in 2020.
The “Yes” camp won 93 per cent of votes cast in Sunday’s constitutional referendum, but most eligible voters stayed at home, following the opposition call to boycott, with the official turnout rate put at just over 42 per cent.
An opposition leader quickly dismissed the official results as “fake”.
The package, put to the country’s 6.3 million voters, also includes creating a post of vice president as well as a senate, a third of whom would be appointed by the head of state. The measures have alarmed opposition leaders and prompted accusations that Ouattara is trying to instal a sympathetic successor.
“More than 90 per cent... of Ivorians have understood the need to turn the page on our shameful ways,” Joel N’Guessan Joel N’Guessan, spokesman for Ouattara’s Rally of Republicans Party (RDR), told AFP.
The 42 per cent turnout rate was “honourable,” he added.
But Pascal Affi Nguessan, head of the opposition Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), said the election results were “obviously faked”. The official numbers “do not match reality. We all witnessed an electoral desert (on Sunday),” he added, referring to the turnout.
He spoke of cases of “corruption and ballot-stuffing”, insisting that the real turnout rate was no higher than 10 percent. “The coming battle” is to mobilise support for parliamentary elections, at a date yet to be fixed, in order to overturn the new constitution, he told AFP.
