IVORY
COAST: State of Denial and Denial of Justice
IDEA
Viewpoint
Ghelawdewos
Araia
April
1, 2011
Ivory
coast, which is now officially known as
Cote d� Ivoire (the French version of the
country�s name), was once considered as one
bright spot among the newly independent nations of
Africa in the 1960s. However, the �beacon of
hope� image attributed to Ivory Coast was more
of myth than reality; that image was entrusted
upon this West African country (along with Kenya
in East Africa) only because the country adopted
an open-door capitalist policy of development.
Ironically, however, the country did not adopt a
liberal pluralist political system, and on the
contrary it was governed by a mono-party system.
What the world, and in particular the West
appreciated then is the fact that Ivory Coast
embraced the market economy but not the potential
curse of a one-party rule, whose legacy now
clearly afflicted the Ivorian larger society and
has in fact a deleterious effect on the peace,
stability, and development programs and projects
of the nation.
There is no doubt that Ivory
Coast was known for its Cocoa production and was a
prosperous country relative to its neighbors in
West Africa, and in the late 1970s (like many
African countries) exhibited propensity toward
democratic governance and boosted its constitution
by allowing greater freedom in democratic
elections, but because there was lack of genuine
pluralism, transparency, and accountability
(unlike Botswana, for instance) the country
degenerated into dictatorship and backwardness in
the 1980s and 1990s.
When Ivory Coast gained
independence on august 7, 1960, its first
president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, a former labor
leader, was perceived not only as unifying figure
but also as political strategist who could design
plural democracy for Ivory Coast. On the contrary,
he became a dictator and would not allow free
elections until after his three-decade rule. In
1990 political parties that were prohibited from
participating in elections were given a chance to
come aboard contestation, and in this election the
contending parties were the Ivory Coast Democratic
Party (PDCI) of Houphouet Boigny, Ivorian Popular
Front (FPI) of Laurent Gbagbo, and other smaller
parties. The PDCI, it was officially reported, won
163 seats out of total 175 parliamentary seats, or
82% of the votes against the FPI.
Although the PDCI and Boigny
continue to dominate the Ivorian political
landscape in the early 1990s, some important
constitutional amendments were made nonetheless:
The speaker of the house would assume the post of
the presidency in the event there is going to be
political vacuum; a new cabinet position of the
prime minister was also instituted, and in fact by
the latter amendment Allassane Quattara became the
first Prime Minister of Ivory Coast.
The amendments to the
constitution, however, were not sufficient enough
to meet the desire and demands of the people of
Ivory Coast, and as a result in February of 1992,
the FPI of Laurent Gbagbo in collaboration with
other Ivorian opposition parties, including the
Ivorian Workers Party (PIT) and the Ivorian Human
Rights League organized a mass demonstration.
Unfortunately, the demonstration turned into a
riot and this was unforeseen bonus for the
government, because it began to unleash crackdown
on the opposition including convicting and jailing
the prominent opposition leaders such as Gbagbo
and Degny Segui of the Human Rights League. The
demonstration-turned-riot melodrama worked out
well for the government and the unforeseen
consequence led to the withdrawal of Gbagbo�s
people from the parliament.
Once the government broke the
stamina of the opposition, the fight in the arena
was limited to Bedie and Quattara, and the latter
lost in the power struggle with the former in
1994. Pessimism and despondency reigned supreme
among the Ivorians and like other Africans they
knew then, as now, that in most African nations
elections are phony and are characterized by
theatrical propaganda to hoodwink the people and
impress the donor nations, and sometimes it is not
without reason that Africans invoke the
ontological forces so that they can intervene on
their behalf. For the people of Ivory Coast, the
�higher order� indeed intervened in the post
October 1990 election; the octogenarian
Houphouet-Boigny died in 1993.
In the October 1995 election,
the contending political personalities were Henri
Konan Bedie and Allassane Quattara; the latter was
a formidable challenger, but Konan Bedie and his
associates, who belong to the PDCI, connived and
conspired against Quattara. They came up with a
lame excuse in an effort to systematically eject
the Quattara forces from the election: they banned
Quattara from running for office after they
fashioned a new law that denies citizens whose
parents were not born in Ivory coast. Quite
obviously, thus, Quattara was forced to boycott
the election and Konan Bedie became the second
president of Ivory Coast after Houpouet-Boigny.
However, it was not easy for
Bedie to govern Ivory Coast because the
dissatisfied predominantly Muslim North, the home
of Quattara, rebelled and for the most part it was
unruly, very much like what is going on today. In
this context, one can say with caution and at the
risk of obfuscating dialectic reasoning, history
has indeed repeated itself in Ivory Coast. In
fact, it is against the above backdrop that we
must now critically examine the present political
stalemate in Ivory Coast.
The standoff is between
Allassane Quattara who won the November 2010
election and Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent who
clearly lost in the election but wants to cling to
power ad infinitum as most tyrants across the
board in Africa do. Deep in his heart, Gbagbo
knows that Quattara is the winner, but he is in a
state of denial and as a result he would be the
catalyst for the denial of justice in Ivory Coast.
The Ivorians, other Africans,
and the international community know very well
that Allassane Quattara is the winner, and as such
he should be the legitimate president of his
country. It is for this apparent reason that the
African Union (AU), the European Union (EU), the
United Nations, and the United States extended
support to Quattara and recognized him as the new
president of Ivory Coast. In point of fact,
because Quattara is the winner in the presidential
election of 2010 and because he got the support of
the people of Ivory Coast and the international
community, he formed the new government within the
premises of the hotel he is staying in; a hotel
that has now become a refuge for a political
refugee. Gbagbo, by the same token, but in
defiance to the will of the Ivorians, democratic
principles, and the parameters of the
constitution, appointed his own cabinet and is
determined to stay in power.
While the dual governments of
Ivory Coast are at loggerheads and civil strife
continues unabated, Ivorian politics akin to the
proverbial fighting elephants that destroy the
grass beneath them, will destabilize Ivory Coast
further and the people will pay the ultimate
price. In fact, the people are already paying the
price; thousands have been killed and millions
were forced to flee their homes. In the meantime
the UN peacekeeping forces are securing the
Quattara political enclave, and the mandate that
was already extended by the Security Council till
June 2011, could further be extended in light of
the worsening and deteriorating situation in Ivory
Coast.
The standoff has already
turned into a civil strife or more specifically a
fight between the Quattara and the Gbagbo forces
and it is highly probable that Ivory Coast could
plunge into an intensified civil war as in 2002.
It is unfortunate that the two contending leaders
are unable to negotiate peacefully and save their
country from a deadly peril; it is also equally
unfortunate that ECOWAS was unable to mitigate the
dangerous situation in Ivory Coast and the AU was
unable to come up with a viable solution. These
two African organizations, one regional and the
other continental are caught off guard because the
leaders in their respective nation-states (with
very few exception) are confronted by similar
political phenomena that has now engulfed Ivory
Coast. They couldn�t come up with a solution
because, after all, they have not solved their
homegrown problems that are manifestations of
undemocratic governances. A significant number of
African leaders are either in a state of denial or
they are paranoid and under their reign, justice
has been denied and has in fact become a distant
prospect for African societies.
Ultimately, thus the solution
must come from the people of Ivory Coast
themselves. Both Quattara and Gbagbo are learned
men; the former, by virtue of his banking
experience was an International Monetary Fund
official, and the latter was a university
professor, and they must be able to sit down and
talk for the sake of their country and their
people. They can share power and form a coalition
government, or Gbagbo must be persuaded to exit
peacefully and Quattara must show some fortitude
to accommodate his erstwhile foe. This is done by
sophisticated people who understand the complexity
of politics and who also prioritize the security
and stability of their country, and above all the
welfare of their people. Otherwise, the state of
denial in one and the unwillingness of compromise
on the other may subsequently deny justice to the
people of Ivory Cost for a long period of time.
All Rights Reserved. � Copyright IDEA, Inc. 2011. Dr.
Ghelawdewos Araia can be contacted for educational
and constructive feedback via dr.garaia@africanidea.org
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