After being delayed six times, Cote d'Ivoire's landmark presidential elections will go ahead on Sunday. The nation has been in turmoil since a military coup in 1999, six years after the death of the country's first post-colonial president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny.
The unrest included a disputed election in 2000 and a brief civil war. The conflict ended in 2007 but deep political tension remains. In addition, the nation is awash in arms – disarmament has not been completed and there are concerns of further violence should Sunday's polls turn out badly. Rinaldo Depagne, senior West Africa analyst of the International Crisis Group, spoke with allAfrica this week about the potential risks and hopes associated with Sunday's election.
Your latest report on Cote d'Ivoire, published in May, says that unless senior Ivorian politicians refrain from xenophobic language and more is done to ensure the security of the whole electoral process, they may be preparing the ground for violent chaos, either before, during or in the immediate aftermath of elections. Does that analysis still stand?
Overall, the situation is better and the campaign is running quite smoothly and we are happy about this. But they didn't really improve the security and the securitization of the vote. This is the problem in the [coming] days, especially in the west of Cote d'Ivoire where you still have former pro-government militias, armed. Our colleagues from Human Rights Watch published a report speaking about the very high level of criminality still going on in this region. It is not a good environment in which to organize an election. We fear trouble because of this lack of securitization.
It seems like the trickiest part of this whole process might be the post-election period. It certainly has been difficult in neighboring Guinea – getting to the run-off vote. Do you expect a run-off in Cote d'Ivoire and do you think Ivorians, and political leaders, will accept the winner of the election?
There are two concerns. The first one is what if one of the three main candidates wins in the first [round], how will the two losers react? Even if there is a second [round] how will the loser of the first round react?
It's very difficult to say and we really don't know. But what we do know is that if there is trouble, the securitization won't be enough to cope. What we have here is a very, very unprepared and very sloppy securitization plan. A few months ago the securitization plan was based on the "mixed forces" – a force composed of 4,000 soldiers of the regular army and 4,000 soldiers of the former rebellion (Forces Nouvelles). This force today is not operational and so you don't have the core of the securitization plan.
To replace it you've got … a unit from the Defense and Security Forces. These guys, they are 800, are not really a force that can securitize a poll or an election. It has been invented to cope with armed robbers in Abidjan. So they apparently don't have anything to do with politics or elections but they will be there and it will be a danger.
And then you've got the UN (Unoci – United Nations Operation in Cote d'Ivoire), who hasn't got a mandate to intervene. Their mandate is to assist the Ivorian forces. But as the Ivorian forces are not well prepared we don't know how they will behave if there is serious trouble after the first [election] results.
Do you think there was sufficient international pressure – either from the West or the West African region – to secure disarmament or was the focus overwhelmingly on making sure the elections finally occurred?
Yes – massive pressure. You've got all those people from the UN involved, you've got Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States) diplomatically involved. Nobody today in the international community has an interest to see Cote d'Ivoire in shambles. It will affect the [entire] region. Foreign diplomats are not stupid so they know they need to put some pressure on Ivorians to stabilize the country. Cote d'Ivoire hasn't been abandoned. You've got many people still coming to Abidjan trying to make Ivorian politicians understand that their interest is to have peace in their country.
Now it depends on the will of those senior politicians and will they be able to restrain their appetite for power and their passion for power? The key to the answer belongs to senior Ivorian politicians. And those three guys (candidates Henri Konan Bedie, Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara) they have a very special story with Cote d'Ivoire and they've got a special story between them. They are quite old and so for them it is the last chance to reach power and to count in history – that's why you've got all this passion around this election. I think the answer belongs to them.
The issue of national identity has been one of the main obstacles to holding elections. During the civil war the country was divided between the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south. Politicians, especially, have whipped up anti-northern sentiment, saying residents there were not genuine Ivorians because many are immigrants from neighboring countries. This came into play with the issuance of voter identification cards, with the fear being that non-Ivorians could tip the scales toward a certain candidate. Has the identity issue been sufficiently resolved?
This is an issue that is the main root of the conflict. It's not over; it's not finished. A new president will have to find a solution to solve the problem of identity. One of the solutions is to impose new rules for land ownership – who has the right to own the land of Cote d'Ivoire. It is a very important matter and I think it will be one of the first big issues that the new president will have on his desk.
Have any of the politicians given any indication how they will handle this?
This question of identity has been used by politicians to reach power. They've got to understand that, again, it's not in their interest to play with this kind of question. The interest is to solve it if Cote d'Ivoire wants to be a new country or an important country in the region of West Africa.
In Crisis Group we are very concerned about the west of Cote d'Ivoire … [and] measures to stop the violence in this region and bring back law and order. In Guiglo or [other cities] you don't even have a police station and you don't have courts. So how can you stabilize a region like this? Moyen Cavally region is the size of [the U.S. state of] Connecticut and there is no tribunal for all of this region, so when somebody is committing a crime he won't be judged because there is no place to judge him. So one of the big measures you've got to impose is to bring back law and order – courts and a sufficient amount of policemen.
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Is there anything else that you would like to add?
Cote d'Ivoire is a very special country to West Africa. It is the economic engine of West Africa—with Nigeria, but for French-speaking Africa it is the economic engine. This country has so many possibilities. This is a very strange country because it is always swinging between hell and paradise, and what we can hope is that the swing this time will be on the side of paradise, and not the side of hell. Perhaps "hell" is a little bit too strong, but it's always between peace and conflict. You can't call this war. You can call the Liberian situation as it was in the 1990s a war, but in Cote d'Ivoire you had perhaps four days of fierce battles and the rest was a kind of a very strange slow-motion conflict.
We hope that this time Ivorian politicians will have in their hearts and in their minds enough love for their country to avoid the use of extremist militias or this xenophobic language as a weapon to get in power.
Do you think Houphouet-Boigny ever imagined that this would happen to Cote d'Ivoire?
No. I remember I was in Cote d'Ivoire at the beginning of the war in October, November 2002 and the people you met at this time they were absolutely surprised about what happened to them. For them it was impossible that their successful and big country was at war. And I think Felix Houphouet-Boigny, if you told him in 1991, "There will be war in your country," I think he maybe would tell you, "Are you crazy?"
