Abidjan — Dark rain clouds gathered over Ivory Coast's commercial capital Abidjan on Sunday, threatening to drench the vote to end of ten months of military rule under General Robert Guei. The weather held. But that did little to encourage the five million registered voters to cast their vote.
When polling stations closed at about 6pm local time (and GMT), the general but unofficial consensus was that turnout was low in Abidjan and other major cities across the country. Two leading political parties, the former governing PDCI and the opposition RDR called for a boycott which many of their supporters appear to have observed.
About two hours before the polls closed, the leader of the EU election monitors, Gwyn Morgan, said: "Taken overall, so far the turn-out is low and disappointing particularly in the north because there is no Muslim candidate. There's likely to be a very high abstention rate."
Voting got off to a slow start in Abidjan and other cities and was expected to pick up later in the day after church services and family meals. But observers throughout Ivory Coast reported much reduced attendance at polling stations compared with the 56 percent turnout at the July referendum.
Adama Ibrahima Doumbia, a petty trader, did not vote on Sunday in Abobo, the normally bustling working class district he lives in. Doumbia, 32, called the poll a 'masquerade' to maintain Guei in top job. He said Ivory Coast needed democracy, not the military.
By late afternoon, only twenty percent of voters had cast their ballot at the polling area where Doumbia was registered, but chose not to vote.
Wearing a powder blue suit and a modest smile, General Guei called Ivory Coast a peace-loving country and said he was optimistic about the conduct of the vote.
At the end of the vote, the National Electoral Commission had given no indication of the results so far, or a date for the final result, but vote counting was brisk. There has been talk of Tuesday midday for the announcement of the election winner, but no official confirmation so far.
Political and ethnic tensions have reached breaking point in Cote D'Ivoire during a difficult year of instability and insecurity. A delegation of influential African leaders, backed by the Organisation of African Unity, called on General Guei to delay the elections and extend the transition, with a collective leadership including his opponents. The general declined.
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The race for the top job is between General Guei and the veteran opposition socialist, Laurent Gbagbo. Three other presidential candidates are largely considered also-rans with no chance of victory. A longtime opponent of successive governments in Ivory Coast, Gbagbo has now been labelled by the boycotting party, the RDR, a 'traitor who sold out to a dictatorship'.
Gbagbo and his supporters are confident he will win the election and have warned against any attempt to rig the vote.
The call for a boycott followed the exclusion by the Supreme Court of twelve candidates from the race for presidency, including the former prime minister Alassane Dramane Ouattara, who heads the Rally of Republicans or RDR. Two others withdrew. Six contenders were also disqualified from the former governing Democratic Party which led Cote D'Ivoire to independence in 1960 and stayed in power until December last year when President Henri Konan Bedie was overthrown in Guei's coup.
Ouattara's RDR blames Guei (and Konan Bedie before him) for the disqualification of their candidate. Mr Ouattara has been challenged in court as having Burkinabe nationality but he insists he and his parents are Ivorian.
Ouattara was prime minister, under the late President Felix Houphouet Boigny, from 1990 to 1993. A Muslim northerner, he has considerable support in the north which seems to have rejected Guei's bid for the presidency by staying away from the polls on Sunday.
