Analysis: Ivory Coast’s leader puts democracy on pause, delays elections once more

Analysis: Ivory Coast leader stalling democracy

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — He got his first one-year extension in 2005. And another in 2006. And every year since, President Laurent Gbagbo has gone through the motions of organizing presidential elections, only to cancel them at the last minute.

His critics say he has taken the country hostage, putting democracy on pause by refusing to hold elections many say he will likely lose.

The latest cancellation was two weeks ago, when Gbagbo dissolved the government just weeks ahead of the ballot, claiming the voter roll had been tampered with and postponing the poll by two months.

It prompted riots that left at least five dead in a country that was once a model of political stability and economic prosperity, dubbed the “African miracle” for its roaring growth rate. Ivory Coast is still the world’s top cocoa producer but its people have become increasingly poorer and impatient mobs have taken to the streets.

Although Gbagbo is known to have significant support in the country’s south, experts and ordinary citizens say he doesn’t have the numbers to win an election.

“All he is doing is trying to buy himself time,” said political analyst and newspaper owner Abdoulaye Sangare. “It’s so that he can fix his main problem, which is figuring out how to get elected.”

Late last year, the country’s election commission produced a voter roll consisting of some 5 million voters whose citizenship had been confirmed and a gray list of 1 million who need to provide proof of their nationality to make the list.

Sangare said that soon after the list was delivered, the government audited it and concluded that the voters were overwhelmingly from ethnicities and regions of the country that favor the opposition. On Feb. 12, Gbagbo announced on state television he was unilaterally dissolving the government and its election commission, making it impossible for elections to go ahead as planned.

Gbagbo’s continued postponement of the election comes at a time when the population is feeling the economic pinch of higher food prices and growing unemployment.

In Abidjan’s gritty Abobo suburb, where police beat back anti-Gbagbo protesters this week, teacher Yeo Klotioloma said students can no longer afford to buy books. Many don’t eat properly and fall asleep in class, he said.

“Each time we think we’re at the end, each time we think it’s over, we suddenly go backward,” said Klotioloma, who said he set fire to tires during the protest. “Gbagbo needs to go. He is just drawing out our misery.”

Gbabgo came to power after a 1999 military coup led by Gen. Robert Guei. Guei organized elections the next year, but disqualified his top opponents — including toppled President Henri Konan Bedie, who was ticked off the list for not properly filling in his health certificate, and former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara, who was accused of not being a full-blooded Ivoirian because his parents were born near the country’s borders.

Guei faced off against Gbagbo — and lost. When the general tried to claim victory, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets to prevent him from staying in power. Two years into Gbagbo’s term, an armed uprising plunged the country into civil war.

When Gbagbo’s first term expired in 2005, he argued elections could not proceed because rebels had not been disarmed. The United Nations gave Gbagbo one year to hold elections. As the deadline approached, the opposition said they would reject his request for another extension, but he forced it through.

In 2007, he signed a peace deal with the rebels, creating a unity government and a roadmap for elections. It called for the creation of an electoral commission that would include appointees from all political sides and whose task was to prepare the voter roll.

The commission redefined citizenship as a person that has at least one Ivoirian parent, changing the electoral law which had earlier required both parents to be citizens. The new definition eliminates previous challenges to Ouattara’s candidacy. He was banned from running in both 1995 and 2000 on the argument that one of his parents is from Burkina Faso.

Both he and Bedie, the former president who was disqualified in 2000, are now back in Abidjan, where they lead two top opposition parties which are expected to carve out a significant chunk of the electorate.

“So long as he will be able to avoid elections, he will not hold elections,” said the 68-year-old Ouattara. “This is clear in my mind. He knows he cannot win … Therefore — like many dictators — he prefers to take a chance and remain.”

In dissolving the government, Gbagbo blamed the election commission and accused its opposition-allied chief of trying to add 429,000 illegitimate voters to the rolls.

The International Crisis Group said in a report that the delays are part of Gbagbo’s strategy to “slow the process down.” The report, published last year, predicted that Gbagbo would halt the electoral process at the last moment and accuse those responsible for registering voters of not doing their job properly.

“It was 95 percent done. We had just 5 percent left to go — and the very next day, he dissolved the government,” said Nicolas Baba, the spokesman for the disbanded Independent Election Commission.

The former French colony won independence in 1960 and became an economic powerhouse, overtaking both Brazil and Colombia to become the world’s top exporter of cocoa by 1979. It also became Africa’s top exporter of palm oil and pineapples.

Tens of thousands of immigrants poured in from neighboring countries lured by high-paying farm jobs and a liberal land ownership policy. Jennifer Cooke, Africa program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Ivory Coast’s stunning economic success allowed its leaders to ignore issues of governance, which are then laid bare when the economy takes a turn for the worse.

That has become clear to municipal street sweeper Therese Ba, one of a dozen workers who gathered at a traffic island leading to the chic Cocody district and begged for coins from passing motorists. The workers started a strike earlier this week because they claim the Gbagbo regime has not paid them for at least three months.

“We are like a baby on the back of its mother,” she said. “We just look up to the person in charge. I don’t know if having elections will change anything … All I know is that before all this, I used to get paid every month. Now I can’t afford to eat.”

Rukmini Callimachi has covered West Africa since 2007 and is based in Dakar, Senegal. Marco Chown Oved contributed to this report from Abidjan.