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Tag: Ivory Coast poll

  • Ouattara wins Ivory Coast poll

    Ouattara wins Ivory Coast poll

    Ivory Coast’s President, Alassane Ouattara, won a landslide poll victory and a second five-year term in a weekend vote intended to draw a line under years of turmoil and a 2011 civil war, the elections commission announced on Wednesday.

    Ouattara won a total of 2,118,229 votes, or 83.66 percent of ballots cast, President of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI), Youssouf Bakayoko, announced at a media conference.

    Sunday’s vote had a turnout of 54.63 percent, he said.

    The former International Monetary Fund official, whose leadership has helped the West African nation re-emerge as a rising economic star after the 2011 civil war, faced a deeply divided opposition, Reuters reported.

    Ouattara won the most votes in all but one of the 31 regions as well as the largest city, Abidjan, and the capital, Yamoussoukro, results showed.

    He won all but 16 votes in his home constituency of Kong, in Ivory Coast’s north, where more than 14,000 voters cast ballots.

    Sunday’s election was judged to be peaceful and transparent by observers, likely reassuring investors who have flooded into the world’s top cocoa grower, drawn by growth around nine percent over the past three years.

    “I would like to congratulate all Ivoirians for their maturity and exemplary behaviour,” Ouattara said late on Tuesday before the results were announced.

    “Ivory Coast is resolutely committed to the path of stability and the reinforcement of democracy.”

  • Ivory Coast holds first post-war presidential poll

    Ivory Coast’s President, Alassane Ouattara, was heavily favoured to win a second term in a Sunday vote seen as crucial to turning the page on a decade-long political crisis that ended in a brief civil war in 2011.

    Ouattara, whose leadership has helped the West African nation re-emerge as a rising economic star on the continent, is facing a divided opposition – but a partial boycott and voter apathy could result in low turnout, the BBC Reports.

    A peaceful election is crucial to reassuring investors who have flooded into the world’s top cocoa grower, drawn by growth rates of around nine percent over the past three years as other African economies have crumbled due to the commodities crash.

    More than six million Ivoirians are registered to cast their ballots at around 20,000 polling stations, with voting officially beginning at 7 a.m. (0700 GMT).

    At a primary school in the western city of Man, a witness saw hundreds of people waiting to have their identities verified by new biometric technology before heading into the voter booths.

    In a number of locations, however, voting materials arrived late, causing delays.

    “We’ve been here since 5 o’clock this morning, but as you can see for yourself there’s nothing,” said Zacharia Traore, a shopkeeper and one of hundreds of people waiting to vote at a school in the city of Gagnoa.

    An elections commission official said the same problem had affected many polling stations in the area. And voters in the Yopougon district of the commercial capital Abidjan were also forced to wait for ballots to arrive.

  • Ivory Coast ex-PM withdraws from presidential race

    Former Ivory Coast prime minister, Charles Konan Banny, pulled out of the race for the presidency on Friday alleging irregularities, two days before a poll expected to return President Alassane Ouattara to office.

    Ouattara is heavily favoured to win Sunday’s ballot, meant to draw a line under a decade-long crisis which culminated in a brief 2011 civil war that killed over 3,000 people in the wake of the last presidential vote, Reuters reported.

    The president wrapped up his campaign on Friday cheered by thousands of supporters during a tour of the economic capital Abidjan ahead of a closing rally in the central Place de la Republic of the Plateau business district.

    Banny is the third of 10 candidates to pull out of the race.

    “After carrying through to the end  of the fight to push our leaders to spare Ivory Coast from renewed suffering, I have decided to withdraw from this unfair process,” Reuters quoted the ex- PM as saying at a news conference.

    Mamadou Koulibaly and Amara Essy, both members of the opposition National Coalition for Change to which Banny also belongs, have also withdrawn claiming the election process was unfairly stacked in Ouattara’s  favour. They are calling for a boycott.

    Earlier this week, Banny alleged that there were irregularities on the voter lists that could allow some voters to cast multiple ballots.

     

  • Ouattara launches re-election bid, pledges access to justice

    Ouattara launches re-election bid, pledges access to justice

    Ivory Coast’s President, Alassane Ouattara, pledged on Friday to improve citizens’ access to justice as he launched his bid for re-election in an October 25 poll he hopes will cement the country’s economic recovery following a brief civil war.

    Ouattara, who is widely expected to win a second term, is presenting himself as the guardian of stability and the new-found prosperity in French-speaking West Africa’s largest economy, Reuters reported.

    Nobody expects a repeat of the civil war that marred the aftermath of the 2010 presidential election, when more than 3,000 people were killed, but doubts linger among investors over Ivory Coast’s long-term political and economic stability.

    Ouattara marked the first day of the official two-week campaign period with a rally in the capital Yamoussoukro that attracted thousands of supporters, some brandishing signs reading “With ADO,” referring to the president’s initials.

    “I will make accessibility to, and the independence of, the courts my guiding principle so that every Ivorian, whatever their social standing or ethnic or geographical origin, can trust the justice system,” he told the crowd.

    “Every Ivorian deserves that the fundamental rights spelled out in our constitution and the Charter of the United Nations be respected,” said Ouattara, dressed in a white shirt bearing his own image.

     

  • Protests in Ivory Coast over Ouattara’s re-election bid

    A second day of violent protests broke out in at least two towns in Ivory Coast on Friday over incumbent President Alassane Ouattara’s candidacy in an October election, witnesses said on Saturday.

    One person was killed and others injured on Thursday as supporters and opponents of Ouattara clashed.

    Police fired tear gas as they separated the two factions both days.

    Before winning power in a 2010 election, Ouattara was twice excluded from running for office as opponents questioned his national origins. Disputes over his qualifications were among the central causes of the years of turmoil, including civil wars in 2002 and 2011, Reuters reported.

    The upcoming elections are meant to draw a line under the decade-long political crisis. They will be a critical test of the West African nation’s stability for foreign investors attracted by its rapid economic revival.

    The constitutional court on Wednesday cleared 10 candidates including Ouattara, who is heavily favoured to win re-election, to take part in the October 25 vote.

    However, the decision sparked protest calls from a segment of the opposition, among them a faction of ex-president Laurent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party.

    Clashes broke out on Friday between rival groups of Gbagbo and Ouattara supporters in the town of Gagnoa, in Gbagbo’s home region, and in Bonoua, the hometown of ex-First Lady Simone.

    “The pro-Gbagbos set up barricades and the pro-Ouattaras tried to remove them. From there it degenerated. They were throwing rocks and other projectiles at each other,” one witness in Gagnoa, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

    Police moved in and separated the groups, he said, and there were no immediate reports of injuries. In Bonoua, police fired tear gas to disperse rival groups, who also threw stones.

    On Thursday, at least one person was killed and others injured near Bayota, a town in Ivory Coast’s cocoa-rich west.

    “The FPI asks its militants, but also the entire Ivorian population, to once again mobilise to continue peaceful demonstrations in the next days,” Boubakar Kone, a spokesman for FPI hardliners, said in a statement.