How Democratic is the Ivory Coast?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Alassane Ouattara, the president of the Ivory Coast, learned well from his mentor, Félix Houphouet-Boigny, the benevolent dictator who ran the west African country from its independence in 1960 until his death in 1993. Ouattara knows how to play the game.

Not only does he present a positive and welcoming face to the international community and foreign aid organizations, but he also has his chief political opponent, Laurent Gbagbo, languishing in a prison cell thousands of miles away in The Hague, charged by the International Criminal Court with crimes against humanity.

Under Houphouet-Boigny, the Ivory Coast became the world’s largest cocoa producer and the country prospered. The strategy of post-colonial elites was to build on the growth of the plantation economy.

Foreign companies were allowed to repatriate most of their profits with laws that facilitated foreign investments, especially French.

As a champion of French foreign policy in Africa, Houphouet-Boigny made the country the largest recipient of French foreign aid during the 1960s. He allowed the French military a base in Abidjan, from which France could project power across its former west African possessions.

But pressure by international donors to reduce state regulation in the coffee and cocoa sectors led to economic downturn. By the end of his rule, what had been called the African miracle was becoming a mirage. And things went downhill politically as well.

In 2000 Laurent Gbagbo won election to the presidency, Ouattara having been disqualified under a recently-passed law that barred anyone whose parents were born outside the country from running. (His came from Burkina Faso.)

This started a five-year civil war in 2002 between northern rebels known as the New Forces and the army. 

The Ivory Coast became divided between north and south, Muslim and Christian, Ivorian and non-Ivorian ancestry, with the northern Muslim Ouattara and the southern Christian Gbagbo bitter rivals for control of the state. 

No presidential election was held again until 2010. This time, Ouattara was able to compete. The predominantly Muslim North supported him, and the mainly Christian south backed Gbagbo.

Ouattara won but Gbagbo refused to step down. Violence ensued, ending in 2011 with the capture and arrest of Gbagbo in Abidjan by pro-Ouattara forces backed by French forces. 

Gbagbo was sent to The Hague that November, charged with various crimes, including murder, rape and persecution of opponents.

With Gbagbo out of the way, Ouattara won a second term in a landslide in 2015, capturing 83.6 per cent of the vote.

Ouattara is clearly favoured by western countries, especially France, which continues to dominate the economy of the country.

He earned a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972, and then worked for the International Monetary Fund in Paris until brought back to the country in 1990 by Houphouet-Boigny to become prime minister.

He was deputy  managing director at the IMF between 1994 and 1999.

Ouattara has been focusing mainly on economic growth, his efforts devoted to raising money and support from international institutions and attract private investment. 

His political project of making the Ivory Coast an “emerging country” by 2020 is a key element in this strategy, which also involves gaining debt relief.

Ouattara was quick to present the country as stable, in a region facing conflict in Mali and tensions in Nigeria with Boko Haram. Indeed, he insists on keeping a French military presence in the country.

To gain favourable opinion abroad, Ouattara claims to be fighting corruption as part of a good governance strategy – though it’s uncertain whether this is actually the case. 

No matter; the buzz words are aimed at those he needs to impress. This is all part of the old Houphouet-Boigny playbook.

As his ideological successor, Ouattara is the Elysée’s man in Abidjan.