Abidjan — Early indications suggest a comprehensive boycott of the presidential election by two major parties whose candidates were disqualified may have kept voters away from the poll.
More than five million Ivorians are eligible to vote for a new president to end almost a year of military rule.
Voting got off to a slow, but calm start in the commercial capital, Abidjan. Sunday church services seemed to be the early morning priority. Officials at several polling stations said they expected voting to pick up later in the day. But by 4pm local time (and GMT), there was little evidence of this in the city. Polling stations opened at 8am and close at 6pm.
In Treichville, a working class district of Abidjan, a group of young men, glistening with sweat, said they had no intention of casting their votes until they had finished their game of street football. But in Yopougon, the urban stronghold of the veteran socialist Laurent Gbagbo, the presidential candidate of the opposition Ivorian Popular Front Party (FPI), there were longish queues, with every voter asked confirming that Gbagbo was their man. Many made the two finger victory sign, which is the party's symbol.
Gbagbo voted at about midday, in residential Riviera, saying he was confident of victory. "I hope the losers will be good losers," said Gbagbo who voiced his concern about the potential for electoral fraud. On Saturday, at his final campaign rally, the FPI leader again warned of a Yugoslav style Milosevic solution by the people if there was any cheating.
Ivory Coasts military leader since December, General Robert Guei, voted shortly after ten oclock at a police training centre in Indenie. He was rejected as the presidential candidate for the former governing Democratic Party (PDCI), and chose to stand as an independent, saying the Ivorian people are his party.
His election campaign has been almost non-existent, with just two public appearances, one at an up-market shopping centre, the other at the formal launch of his election bid. Guei told onlookers where he voted, surrounded by soldiers from the Red Brigade, that he was happy to see that the process was calm. He repeated that Ivory Coast is a peaceful country, adding the winner will win. Guei said he expected the number of voters to mirror a turnout of 56 percent during the constitutional referendum in July.
But the PDCI and the Rally of Republicans (RDR) are hoping a low turnout will totally discredit what they are calling a sham election. The presidential candidates of both parties were ruled out of the running and have called on their supporters to boycott the vote.
Adama Ibrahima Doumbia, 32, a trader in Abobo, a normally bustling area of Abidjan said he was not going to vote. Asked why he had chosen to observe the boycott, he said the election was simply a 'masquerade' to keep General Guei in power. Doumbia spoke scathingly about the military leader saying that what Ivory Coast needed was democracy, not soldiers. Others may feel the same way. Of the four hundred people registered to vote at a nearby school in Abobo, only 67 had voted by 3.30pm.
RDR leaders have accused General Guei of fomenting tribal tensions, by marginalising predominantly Muslim northerners. The RDR presidential hopeful who was excluded from the vote, Alassane Ouattara, is both a Muslim and a northerner, and his nationality has been called into question, though he insists he is Ivorian. Mr Ouattara served as the prime minister of Ivory Coast from 1990 to 1993 under the late President Felix Houphouet Boigny.
Ouattara's spokesman, Aly Coulibaly himself a northerner, said Ivory Coast had been governed by Houphouet, a Baoule leader from the centre of the country, for more than thirty years. And in all that time, he said, the Dioula from the north had had no problems with that. "But the problem now is that we hear Chinese whispers that Guei says it's time for someone from the west to be president". Coulibaly's conclusion, which is a widespread concern throughout Ivory Coast, is that by making tribalism a factor in Ivorian politics means the country is sitting on a powder keg.
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Voting in the northern city of Korhogo was sluggish, with some polling stations reporting not a single voter between eight and ten in the morning, in stark contrast to the July referendum when lines were long.
Five candidates are standing in the presidential poll in Ivory Coast, but most observers say only two stand a chance - General Guei and Laurent Gbagbo. To win in the first round, the successful candidate must gain 50 percent of the vote or face a second round run-off.
