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By Caspar Leighton for AFP ABIDJAN (IslamOnline & AFP) - Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, is set to elect a new president on Sunday after 10 months of military rule that has seen the country become poorer, more divided and unstable.
The country, situated between Ghana and Liberia in the West African region has a population of approximately 16 million, of which 60% are Muslims, 22% are Christian and 18% animists. The divide between a poor Muslim north and a relatively rich predominantly Christian south is set to grow with this election.
When General Robert Guei came to power in a December 24th military coup, the toppling of the unpopular, but elected regime of Henri Konan Bedie, was internationally condemned, resulting in the drying up of all foreign aid. An already struggling economy is now looking sicklier than ever. At the beginning of the month, Ivorian Finance Minister Mamadou Koulibaly warned that the country would have difficulty in meeting debt repayments over the coming three months. "We need 120 billion CFA francs [$162 million] to pay civil servants, to pay for the elections and for debt repayments, we have only 60 billion [$81 million]," declared Koulibaly. "We were supposed to pay roughly 800 billion CFA francs [$1 billion] external debt this year, we have made a great effort and have paid 230 billion [$310 million]," said the minister. Koulibaly said the Ivorian economy was "in a disastrous situation" at the time of the December coup and that while the regime had improved receipts and cut spending, there had been no outside help. Confidence of outside investors has taken a knock, with a major and immediate casualty of the coup being the indefinite suspension of a project by French construction giant Bouygues to build a third bridge across the Abidjan lagoon. An undisciplined and divided army has added to the climate of instability, with the finance minister admitting that any re-emerging investor confidence was quashed by the mutiny of July 4-5, when disgruntled soldiers took to the streets, shooting and looting in pursuit of a pay claim. No precise figures were given, but the finance minister projected negative growth for 2000. Another negative development has been the growth of nationalism, in a country where one in three inhabitants is of foreign origin. Ousted president Bedie started talking about "Ivorianness" during the 1995 election campaign. It was adopted as a weapon against his political rival Ouattara, who is accused by adversaries of being from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast's northern neighbor. Since the coup, nationalist rhetoric has become common currency and lately an election campaign tool, with even the socialist Laurent Gbagbo jumping on the bandwagon to attack his rivals. The increase in nationalist rhetoric from politicians has seen an increase in ethnic violence, with 18 people dying since August in fighting between the indigenous population and Burkina Faso immigrants in the south west of the country. Guei presidential campaign last week was peppered with nationalist sentiment and the crowd roared their approval. The general went so far as to threaten foreigners who talk about "exclusionism" in Ivory Coast with reprisals against their compatriots living in the country. Since the Supreme Court ruling, all seems in place for Guei to be elected president, which would be a triumph for nationalism, militarism and a likely continuation of Ivory Coast's economic isolation. |
A Supreme Court ruling on October 6th that disqualified 14 of 19 presidential hopefuls included opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, a Muslim who was a former prime minister and a deputy director general of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and all candidates of the dominant Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI), was a blow not only against democracy, but also against the Muslim north, as all five northern candidates were barred.
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