Abidjan — Post-election tension got the better of the two rival camps in Ivory Coast's presidential candidates on Monday during a slow vote count at the National Electoral Commission (CNE). The incumbent military leader, General Robert Guei is running against the veteran socialist, Laurent Gbagbo, and three other presidential contenders who are thought to have no chance of winning the Sunday poll.
A confident Gbagbo, who heads the Ivorian Popular Front, came out early to say he was sure of victory, brandishing a ream of interim results phoned and fax to him by FPI election officials around the country.
The atmosphere at a Gbagbo campaign centre, where he held a mid-morning news briefing, resembled more a victory celebration than people awaiting results. Supporters alternately danced to loud music and cheered every time the national radio, blaring out of giant loudspeakers, announced a result in favour of Laurent Gbagbo.
In stark contrast, the mood at General Guei's campaign headquarters was forlorn. The compound was deserted, with only a few supporters looking rather disconsolate. General Guei, who is standing as an independent, has not spoken publicly since he voted on Sunday morning, saying very little other than that Ivory Coast was a peace-loving country and he was confident the election was going well.
But that twelve hour silence was broken by the Information Minister, and government spokesman, Henri Cesar Sama Damalan, in what many see as a counter press conference to Laurent Gbagbo's earlier meeting with journalists. And there seemed to be a subtle change in the gentlemanly agreement for one camp not to criticise the other, when the minister went on the offensive early in the afternoon.
Gbagbo has six ministers serving in the military government formed after the coup in Ivory Coast last December. Overnight, when he was already predicting his own victory, Gbagbo congratulated General Guei for having conducted what he called an exemplary transition during the past ten months.
But the Information Minister was clearly not impressed by the parallel vote counting by the Gbagbo campaign team, when he told journalists that it was wrong for one group to start issuing its own interim results when everyone had agreed that was the duty of the National Electoral Commission. By late morning, the results to hand put Gbagbo in the lead ahead of General Guei.
Some soldiers clearly did not like that trend. They tried to stop the publication of results at the election commission's headquarters, marching into the computerised vote-counting office and ordering staff to stop broadcasting election results live. Gbagbo had announced to journalists that all the military camps in Abidjan had voted solidly for him, though they were awaiting to see how soldiers elsewhere in the country had cast their votes.
A frisson of concern ran through the building when the chairman of the electoral commission, Honore Guie, who had earlier appealed to Ivorians to be patient, failed to appear live as scheduled on the lunchtime national television news with an update. When he showed up more than an hour later, he said he had gone to lunch.
Later in the afternoon, all journalists, including the national broadcaster RTI, were barred from entering the election commission centre, which was already guarded by soldiers who blocked off the building.
The Information Minister told a press briefing that General Guei also had election results, but unlike Mr Gbagbo, he did not think it appropriate to make them public. To loud applause, he then told Guei's supporters that they too could celebrate publicly, because he was sure the general would win, but that the general did not want to pre-empt any announcement by the electoral commission.
The minister said the noisy festive atmosphere among Gbagbo's supporters was nothing new and that he had seen it before; But he warned that this did not necessarily herald victory. Sama Damalan explained that the silence of General Guei's team was in respect for the electoral commission which he said was doing its job and would announce the only legitimate results in due course.
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He said it was premature for Laurent Gbagbo to be talking about victory and forming a new government. The minister added that the legacy of ten short months in office was enough to guarantee that Ivorians were behind General Guei and had voted for him.
Asked whether it was not in fact too early for FPI voters to be in a party mood, Laurent Gbagbo chided journalists with this reply. "This victory is only surprising for people abroad and those who are not attentive observers of the political scene in Ivory Coast. But for those who are, it is no surprise. That's why our supporters are already dancing. During my last rally on Saturday, I did not need to speak because people were already dancing. They were dancing in anticipation of the triumph to come".
