allAfrica.com: Kenya: In the End, Cote d'Ivoire Avoided Hell; Country Too Can Escape (Page 1 of 3)

In this second part of our State of the Nation series, Saturday NATION correspondent Tony Eluemunor writes that Kenya can learn from the experiences of Cote d'Ivoire that small concessions made in mediated talks are as important as the big ones, and that it is possible to reverse the descent into political hell.

On February 1, 2008 the landmark Hotel Ivoire in Abidjan buzzed with political activity. A large crowd had gathered at the gardens, drummers were hard at work and a band was entertaining a group of party leaders, journalists and guests, including representatives of the US Republican and Democratic parties as well as Democratic presidential hopeful Barrack Obama's personal assistant.

Preparations for Cote d'Ivoire's presidential election in October had begun, and the country's Republican Party was holding its national congress that day. If a single event could measure how far the country has come back from its descent into hell, it was that party congress.

The party's standard bearer will in all probability be Mr Alassane Ouattara, the same man whose exclusion from past elections triggered the political crisis that consumed the nation for nearly a decade and led to civil war.

As a gesture of goodwill, the Republican Party invited leaders and representatives of rival parties to the opening ceremony. They sat together on the dais where Mr Ouattara, the party's soon-to-be-nominated presidential candidate, later joined them.

Except for President Laurent Gbagbo, who sent a representative, leaders of all the other parties were present. Mr Ouattara's main rival, Mr Henri Konan Bedie, who had banned him from contesting the 1995 election, was there and shook hands and exchanged the customary kisses with his political foe.

These truly remarkable acts of reconciliation only served to underscore the tragedy that these politicians could only muster the courage to reach out to one another after their country had nearly been destroyed by war. They could have spared their country a lot of pain.

At least 2,000 people were killed and some 1.2 million (about 6 per cent of the population) became internally displaced or sought refuge in neighbouring countries. About 800,000 became IDPs and the other 400,000 fled to neighbouring countries.

Between 500,000 and 700,000 children abandoned school, and many schools and medical facilities closed down (and the incidence of Aids rose) in part because of the departure of civil servants and the breakdown of the central administration in the areas controlled by rebels.

An estimated 20,000 people were made homeless in Abidjan as a result of the government's destruction of shantytowns that had been built near military and "sensitive" establishments. This ill-considered action was intended to stop the infiltration of rebels from densely populated informal settlements into military areas.

As is often the case when a country is engulfed in war, the priorities of public spending shift from education, health and other social services to military, security and humanitarian operations.

Yet despite all this, statistics compiled by the Centre for Systematic Peace show that the civil war accounted for just 2,500 "directly related" deaths. Compared to other wars, the Ivorian conflict was relatively "small". In nearby and much smaller Guinea-Bissau, 6,000 people died in a 1998-99 coup and subsequent civil war.

So how did Cote d'Ivoire pull its chestnuts out of the fire, and what lessons can Kenya learn from this process? It was a long and slow one in which even a small step towards national reconciliation and healing helped.

France, with which Cote d'Ivoire has had a defence pact since independence, installed Mr Bedie as Felix Houphouet-Boigny's successor upon his death in December 1993, thus avoiding for a while whatever problems there might have been between supporters of Mr Bedie and Mr Ouattara.

But when the time came for him to prove himself a statesman by organising a free election, Mr Bedie failed. He banned credible opponents, and their parties boycotted the election, depriving it of credibility and leaving Mr Bedie exposed to a military coup in 1999.

Military leader Robert Guei also lost the next opportunity to make peace when he, too, banned most leading politicians from contesting the 2000 presidential election. When Mr Gbagbo, whom he admitted into the race, roundly defeated him, Gen Guei still declared himself the winner but later did the sensible thing and fled to his home village when the masses rose against him in protest.

Gen Guei could have ordered his troops to shoot the demonstrators who were mainly armed with brooms - to sweep him out of power. But he did not, and Mr Gbagbo became president, averting a major crisis, although not for long.

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