Nigeria Content Online

The
presidential elections in Cote d’Ivoire last Sunday and the second round presidential
elections in Guinea today are major turning points in the march towards the
consolidation of democracy in West Africa.

Guinea has
not known free and fair elections since 1958 and is today facing the difficult
choice of deciding who will exercise power, the rich and powerful Fulani elite
under the leadership of Cellou Dalen, who had been excluded from power since
1958, or the minority ethnic groups supporting the historic opposition figure
and Malinke power broker, Alpha Conde.

Ethno-regional
tensions have delayed the second round since the June 27th first round but
finally, the time of reckoning has arrived.

The
elections in Cote d’Ivoire are part of the long and pain staking attempts to
save the country from the ravages of civil war. It is a country that was, not
too long ago, one of the shining stars of stability and prosperity in the West
African region. It was in that that war broke out between the
government-controlled Southern army and the Forces Nouvelles (New Forces)
controlled by the Northerners. The human carnage and heavy collateral damage
associated with the conflict was unprecedented.

Political
relations broke down, following the death of the country’s founding president,
Felix Houphouet-Boigny in 1993, coupled with the military coup that overthrew
the government of Henri Konan Bedie, who succeeded him in 1999. This threw up
deep internal divisions, resulting in the mutiny that escalated into a
full-scale rebellion in September 2002.

As a
colony, the country occupied a major place in French colonial agriculture,
attracting immigrant workers from throughout the French Empire who worked in
cocoa, coffee, and banana plantations, as well as pineapple and oil palm
plantations that became added at independence. President Felix Houphouet-Boigny
promoted the process with liberal land ownership laws founded on the
revolutionary slogan that “the land belongs to those that cultivate it”.
President Houphouet-Boigny’s government decision to grant foreign migrants the
franchise in national elections added an important political lever to the
latter’s productive economic workforce.

Consequently,
the influx of people into the countries continued. It was estimated that about
40% of the population were descendents of immigrants. For President Boigny, it
was good for the country.

He paid
good prices to these farmers for their products, thereby stimulating production
that catapulted Cote d’Ivoire into the world’s leading producer of cocoa in
1979, the third largest exporter of coffee, after Brazil and Colombia, and
Africa’s leading exporter of pineapples and palm oil. These conditions that
catapulted Cote d’Ivoire into a model of ‘African miracle’ were soon to become
the same reasons for its slip into descent and chaos after the death of
Houphouet-Boigny in 1993.

Conflicts
were inevitable, following the arrival of multiparty politics in 1990, in
response to massive protests by students and opposition leaders such as Laurent
Gbagbo and his Front Populaire Ivoirien – FPI. In the first ever Ivorian
multi-party elections in May 1990, Houphouet-Boigny did not only win the
elections in which Laurent Gbagbo was the only other candidate, he also sought
political accommodation with the north through the appointment of Alassane
Quattara – a Malinke from the Northern Mande ethnic group – to serve as the
country’s Prime Minister, with the aim of tapping on his international
reputation and economic management skills as former director in the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) to redeem Cote d’Ivoire economically.

The
appointment did not only add to an emerging northern consciousness after
decades of agonising and complaints about marginalisation and lagging behind
the south in socio-economic conditions, it also shifted the battle of the
simmering conflicts between Ivorian south and north from economic sphere into
the political sphere, with the latter making strong demands through a Charter
of the North for:

Fuller
recognition of the Muslin religion…, more effortsto reduce regional
inequalities, greater political recognition of the north political loyalty
during the upheavals of the 1980s and …an end to Baoule nepotism in
recruitment to public jobs.

Multi-party
elections also provided Gbagbo’s FPI an opportunity to introduce
ethno-nationalism and xenophobia into the political arena.

The coup,
which brought General Robert Guei to power in December 1999, erupted just
before the general elections slated for 2000. General Guei, who had promised to
stay in power only to “sweep the house clean”, took all by surprise when he
indicated his interest to run in the elections. He disqualified Quattara from
standing in the October 2000 elections, via a politically manipulated Supreme
Court judgement, on the grounds that the latter’s mother was from Burkina Faso.
The exclusion prompted Quattara’s RDR to call for a boycott of the elections.
General Guei’s attempt to stop the elections, in which early results indicated
Gbagbo was winning, led to widespread protests and violent demonstrations by
Gbagbo’s FPI against him. Guei was assassinated, and Gbagbo emerged as
president who maintained the exclusion policy. The result was civil war.

I was an
observer in the elections last Sunday as part of the ECOWAS delegation.

It had
been postponed five times since 2005. It was a victory that it took place
because now the process of nation building can begin because it was relatively
free, fair, and peaceful. Quattara, who had been earlier dismissed as a
foreigner, has emerged as the person to contest against Gbagbo in the second
round election that will determine the future president of the country.