Africa News blog

from Global News Journal:

UN tells Mbeki he got it wrong on Ivory Coast

• UN peacekeeper in Ivory Coast in April 2011. REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon

This week U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, defended the United Nations' record on Ivory Coast.  In a highly unusual public rebuttal, Nambiar told former South African President and African Union mediator for the Ivory Coast conflict, Thabo Mbeki, that it was he -- not the international community -- who got it wrong in the world's top cocoa producer.

In April, Ivory Coast's long-time President Laurent Gbagbo was ousted from power by forces loyal to his rival Alassane Ouattara, who won the second round of a U.N.-certified election in November 2010, with the aid of French and U.N. troops. According to Mbeki -- who has also attempted to mediate in conflicts in Sudan and Zimbabwe -- there never should have been an election last fall in the country that was once the economic powerhouse of West Africa.

Mbeki wrote in an article published by Foreign Policy magazine at the end of April: "The objective reality is that the Ivorian presidential elections should not have been held when they were held. It was perfectly foreseeable that they would further entrench the very conflict it was suggested they would end."

Ivory Coast was split in two by the 2002-3 civil war and the failure to disarm the northern rebels meant the country held an election last year with two rival armies in place, leading to a new outbreak of hostilities when Gbagbo rejected the internationally-accepted election results.

The solution to the conflict, Mbeki wrote, was not to insist that Ouattara take office as president, as the United Nations, France and others did at the time, but a political solution that would have satisfied everybody in the francophone nation. "The African Union understood that a lasting solution of the Ivorian crisis necessitated a negotiated agreement between the two belligerent Ivorian factions, focused on the interdependent issues of democracy, peace, national reconciliation and unity."

The United Nations took nearly four months to come up with a public response to Mbeki. It finally appeared this week in an article in Foreign Policy by Nambiar entitled "Dear President Mbeki: The United Nations Helped Save the Ivory Coast." In his rebuttal, Nambiar vehemently rejects the idea that that the world should have pushed Ouattara to negotiate a power-sharing deal with election-loser Gbagbo.

Lessons learnt from Ivory Coast

TV images of an incredulous Laurent Gbagbo being forcibly evicted from power this week by United Nations- and French-backed Ivorian soldiers send an unequivocal message to other leaders across the continent: outstay your welcome and it could be you next.

Monday’s storming of his Abidjan residence by troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara – whom the rest of the world months ago recognised as winner of the Nov. 28 election – came after Gbagbo was disowned by even his closest African peers.

So the lesson learnt is, as one U.S. official put it early on in the crisis, that the era of stealing elections in Africa is over?

Unfortunately not quite.

While Gbagbo’s fate will no doubt dissuade leaders from being caught red-handed in the act of election theft, some will be drawing up a more cynical “lessons learnt” list along the lines that follow:

Lesson 1: Don’t even entertain the prospect of elections unless you are sure – absolutely sure – of victory. Gbagbo’s mistake was to think that supporters of Henri Konan Bedie would rally to him in the second round. They didn’t. If you’re not certain of victory, best to delay the elections citing technical problems. 

Lesson 2: If you get a heads-up that the result is not going your way, don’t let it get out. To be fair, Gbagbo allies did their best in this department, even snatching the results from the hands of the election commission official who was reading them out. However they were caught unawares shortly afterwards when the commission chief then walked unscheduled into a media-packed hotel and gave news of Ouattara’s eight-point victory to bemused journalists. From then on, the cat was out of the bag.

Ivory Coast: so who is the incumbent now?

In a matter of weeks, Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara have undergone a role reversal which, even by the standards of recent Ivorian history, defies belief.

Before the lightning advance of pro-Ouattara forces on Abidjan last week, Gbagbo was laying siege to his rival in a plush lagoon-side hotel in downtown Abidjan. 

Now those same forces are confident they have Gbagbo pinned down in a bunker at his heavily guarded residence just across town in leafy Cocody.  (Although at time of writing, Gbagbo’s forces appeared to have retaken areas of central Abidjan)

Crucially, many of the FDS regular army forces once loyal to Gbagbo have rallied to Ouattara’s FRCI. But, as is clear from fighting in Abidjan this week, the newly integrated army  is not able to fully assert itself. 

So who is in charge?

The answer is that right now, Ivory Coast is flirting with all-out anarchy. But here are three things that might provide a clearer answer in coming days:     – who will pay the next round of army and public sector wages due in a couple of weeks? If Ouattara manages to do so, expect his hand to strengthen. That’s one of the reasons why he appealed to banks on Thursday to help by reopening their branches.     – Who is in control of the cocoa sector (the world’s largest) and its lucrative levies to the public purse? When Ouattara is confident that he is, he will end his de facto trade embargo and explicitly urge exporters to get back to work. Great for public finances; but bear in mind that the cocoa sector has long been firmly pro-Gbagbo.      -  third, and toughest of all, security. At the moment, Abidjan is riddled with snipers, pillaging thugs and pro-Gbagbo youths kitted out with Kalashnikovs. In the rest of the country, reports grow of the trail of violence left behind by pro-Ouattara troops.

It could be months before many Ivorians feel safe to walk the streets. Ultimately, no one can credibly claim to be in charge of Ivory Coast if law and order is non-existent. Ouattara has told police and gendarmerie chiefs to crack down on crime, and he will be able to rely on UN and French troops for help – up to a point. 

Are “African Solutions” right for the continent’s democracy push?

“This is an African solution to an African problem,” was African Union chief Jean Ping’s reasoning for another round of negotiations to resolve Ivory Coast’s bitter leadership dispute.

Regional leaders and the outside world had been uncharacteristically swift to condemn Laurent Gbagbo’s bid to cling onto power. The AU itself wasted little time suspending the West African nation from the bloc.

Gbagbo lost the presidential election in November last year, according to U.N. certified results, but he has refused to hand over power to rival Alassane Ouattara, citing fraud.

That has left regional powers, the AU and the United Nations all up against the same problem: how to convince Gbagbo to exit gracefully?

Ouattara’s camp have called for a military intervention. But talk of a military option opened up divisions within the AU.

In Ivory Coast, democracy – but not quite as we know it

In the bad old days of post-colonial Africa, dictators would hail their landslide re-elections as a demonstration of the will of an adoring people while international observers would dismiss the polls as electoral farce.   In the brave new Africa, it is often the other way round.   In Ivory Coast this week, the U.N. mission chief is going out of his way to hail the election as broadly democratic, while both incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and rival Alassane Ouattara have complained the vote has been marred by intimidation of their supporters.   So what is going on? Two things, at least.   Electorates are becoming more sophisticated and literate, although there is still often a big gap between urban and rural voters. Election monitoring, while still a tough job, has also improved. And even the most authoritarian of rulers knows donors will not be best pleased at any sign of meddling with monitors’ work. In Ivory Coast, there is particularly close scrutiny because the poll has costs donors $400 million and they want their money’s worth.   Put simply, it is harder to rig an election these days.   Secondly, much of the international strategy for dealing with post-crisis countries like Ivory Coast or perpetual-crisis countries like neighbouring Guinea rests is based on the hope that democratic elections will make things better.   The fear is that if the election turns out to be a joke, then the strategy falls apart. It is therefore in the interest of the internationals to defend the credibility of the vote.   The presidential race in Ivory Coast is an undeniably tight contest  — neither Gbagbo nor Ouattara can hope to achieve the 96.7 percent score achieved last year by Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in a much-criticised poll.   In that sense what is playing out in Abidjan at the moment is broadly positive — an attempt to stage a free and fair poll.   Yet what is troubling is the hiatus between the close of polls on Sunday and the announcement of preliminary results not due until Wednesday. The ballots should be pretty much in from the provinces and tallied up by now. So why the wait?   Speculation is inevitably mounting of behind-the-scenes wrangling over the vote. The local diplomatic corps is urging the two candidates to accept whatever result emerges. Perhaps there are well-meaning efforts going on to soften the blow for whomever has lost it — and reduce the risk of trouble.   The next couple of days will show just how ready for democracy Ivory Coast and its leaders really are.

Ivory Coast’s election dilemma

The authorities in Ivory Coast have now embarked on what is supposed to be the last step of issuing identity papers to its citizens. Those who lost their papers during the war or never had any in the first place and missed out on previous hearings across the country are getting another chance .

This, in theory, will then allow those old enough to register to vote in elections, which are due to take place on November 30. These are the elections meant to end a crisis that was sparked by a short war in 2002-2003 and left the country, the world’s top cocoa producer and home to one of the region’s most stable and flourishing economies, divided between a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south.

The two sides have struck numerous deals and, though there was little fighting after the first few months of the war, election deadlines have come and gone. The 2007 deal between President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro, who has since become prime minister, seems to be Ivory Coast’s best shot at peace yet.

But a glance at the newspapers on the day the new identification drive was launched revealed other concerns. Fraternite Matin, a respected daily, devoted its front page to a headline that read “It is not possible!” above a collection of reasons why the presidential election cannot be held on Nov. 30. Many other papers had columns analysing rumours and the subsequent denials that the army chief had been arrested.

Abidjan is no stranger to rumours but this is a less-than ideal run up to elections. The disarmament of rebels and militia has not taken place on the scale it is meant to have done. Over the last two months, dissident rebels have protested over issues such as money from demobilisation, at times fighting their former colleagues. Hardly any of the equipment needed to register voters has actually been deployed, just days before the electoral lists are meant to be published. Despite this, the official word is still that the polls should take place as planned.

Ivory Coast seems to face a choice between elections on time but in less than perfect conditions or yet another delay. What would the consequences be of putting off the polls, yet again? Given the importance of identity and nationality in Ivory Coast, should elections be held when there are still questions over who is eligible to vote and who is not? What about organising elections when there are still various groups who are still armed and could use them to challenge the results?