Observers gave Ivory Coast’s weekend presidential ballot a clean bill of health on Monday, despite complaints from opposition candidates, in a boost to President Alassane Ouattara who is widely expected to be re-elected.
A former senior IMF official, Ouattara has led the West African nation to an economic revival in the wake of a 2011 civil war, helped by a boom in cocoa production for the world’s largest grower.
Electoral officials said participation in Sunday’s election was a healthy 60 percent, allaying fears of weak turnout.
The commercial capital, Abidjan, was calm on Monday, though traffic was light, as the nation of more than 20 million people awaited initial results from the Independent Elections Commission (CEI) expected in the late afternoon.
Sunday’s vote was marked by some organizational hitches, including the late arrival of materials that led CEI to extend voting in some places by two hours. Many of the computer tablets used to verify voters’ identities had also failed.
PEACE CI, a platform of civil society organizations that fielded some 2,000 observers, said that minor organizational problems had not affected the credibility of the election.
“We believe the election was peaceful, transparent, credible and inclusive,” said U.S. ambassador Terence McCulley, speaking for a separate U.S. observation mission that included 70 diplomats.
“We hope that the first round results that will be announced will be accepted by all those who took part in the election.”
Several opposition candidates had dropped out of the race in the days before the vote, alleging it had been rigged, but the CEI said the candidates had not responded to its requests for proof of those allegations.
Bertin Konan Kouadio, one of the six candidates seeking to unseat Ouattara, claimed that the process had been tainted by irregularities, including foreigners who had been caught attempting to vote. He gave no further details.
“I warn Ouattara: he won’t do to me what he has done to my predecessors and my elders; he won’t succeed in stealing my victory,” he told journalists after casting his vote.
Another candidate, Simeon Konan Kouadio, said his campaign team had been informed of massive fraud during the election, but offered no evidence.
The question of nationality has long been a burning political issue in Ivory Coast, where decades of relative prosperity have attracted Muslim migrants, largely from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso. That alarmed many in the populous Christian south.
Ouattara, who was barred from seeking the presidency over what opponents said were his foreign origins before finally coming to power in 2010, told Reuters last week he would seek to strip nationality clauses from the constitution if elected.
Credit: Reuters
