The election-related tragedy that is currently unfolding in neighbouring Ivory Coast is best described as a coup d'état. President Gbagbo's decision to hang-on to power after his party lost the November 28, 2010 re-run poll should be a source of serious worry for his country and the rest of Africa, Nigeria included.
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The facts are pretty straight forward. As declared by the election commission headed by Youssouf Bakayoko, the Commission Électorale Indépendante (CEI), the opposition candidate, Allassane Ouattara of the Rassemblement Démocratique des Républicains (RDR), won the presidential poll that has been adjudged by both local and international observers as generally free and fair, having received 54.1 % of the total votes cast.
Apart from his RDR, Ouattara is also backed by a coalition of smaller parties while the defeated candidate of the Front Populaire des Ivoiriens (FPI), Laurent Gbagbo, is supported by lesser political formations, too. In a clearly anti-democratic move that has raised political tensions , a validating body higher than the CEI, namely, the Conseil Constitutionnel (CC), whose members are government appointees, has countered the result issued by the electoral commission. The CC has claimed that the out-going president has won the election by obtaining 51. 04 % of the total votes cast. Incidentally, the CC's boss is said to be a close ally of Gbagbo.
The defeated Gbagbo has by his irresponsible act set the stage for a constitutional crisis. He has hastily and illegally caused himself to be sworn-in for a new term. That surreal event was boycotted by the international community with only the Russian, Lebanese and Angolan diplomatic representations in attendance. In addition, the now illegitimate president has nominated a prime minister, one Gilbert-Marie Ngo-Aké.
Almost immediately afterwards, the elected president, Allassane Ouatara, also symbolically took an oath of office at the Hôtel du Golf where he has his campaign headquarters (HQ) and which, significantly also, doubles as the main base in Abidjan of Guillaume Soro's political group, the Forces Nouvelles (FN). The statement of Ouattara's oath-taking was reportedly taken to the CC by special delivery. Soro, a Christian , is the leader of the Northern rebels who took up arms against the Gbagbo government in 2002 following the wrong-headed ploy by Gbagbo to pursue the xenophobic and exclusionist tactics of the former president, Konan Bédié, which sought to politically and economically marginalize as well as disenfranchise a substantial segment of the Ivorian population claiming ancestral provenance from outside the country. Under a reconciliation package that was concluded in 2005 in France, amongst other arrangements, Guillaume Soro had been until two days ago, Prime Minister under Gbagbo. He occupied the post for about three years.
Ouattara has appointed Soro to head his administration. The decision by the latter to realign himself with Ouattara is a tactical move. Also from the North like Soro, Mr. Ouattara, a muslim with vast international contacts, may need the political and military capital of Soro whose outfit, Forces Nouvelles, still boasts of a standing army, the Forces Armées des Forces Nouvelles (FAFN) , which is yet to be integrated into a unified military structure. For the time being, much of the nation's security apparatus is under Gbagbo's control. It has been reported that the FN is already threatening that its rank and file will not fold their arms and allow Gbagbo thwart the will of the Ivorian people.
Laurent Gbagbo's ''coup d'état against democracy '' (that is the apt caption for Jeune Afrique's reportage on the current Ivorian imbroglio) has so far produced two presidents for Houphouet Boigny's country – one illegitimate, and the other legitimate. And we should not forget to mention that there are also two prime ministers! Needless to say that this is largely a self-inflicted wound that Gbagbo and his band of pretended nationalists have inflicted on hapless Ivorians. Surely, there should be consequences.
It is re-assuring that much of the international community has voiced strong condemnation of the Gbagbo self-imposition. The African Union (AU) has rejected Gbagbo's self-perpetuation scheme. The former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, has reportedly transmitted a firm message to Gbagbo and Ouattara, respectively. He has told the former in no uncertain terms that the AU will not tolerate his constitutional transgressions. To the latter, the message is one of moral and political support. Mbeki is expected to report back to the AU when it meets in an extraordinary session in Abuja this Tuesday, December 7, 2010.
Nigeria should for once break with the contradictory posture whereby its past rulers in the likes of the ex-tyrant, Obasanjo, and the late Sani Abacha, engaged in perilous adventures abroad, sometimes supposedly in the defence of democracy, when their own countries were systematically and sadistically being brutalized by the same hypocrites that played the good Samaritan elsewhere.
Two Presidents, One Country: Gbagbo's Coup D'état In Ivory Coast (http://www.saharareporters.com/news-page/two-presidents-one-country-gbagbo%E2%80%99s-coup-d%E2%80%99%C3%A9tat-ivory-coast)