Why Cote d’Ivoire president’s job rating matters beyond his country
The near-giddy relief felt by Ivorians on seeing President Alassane Ouattara gingerly trot across the tarmac of the Felix Houphouet-Boigny international airport on March 2 showed how vital the 72-year-old is to the West African country’s fragile security.
Cote d’Ivoire is still making its way back from a short-lived but deadly civil war lit by the refusal of Laurent Gbagbo to cede power following a 2010 electoral run-off defeat.
Gbagbo is now held at the International Criminal Court after French and UN-backed troops in April 2011 prised him from within the bowels of the presidential palace where he had holed up. He is charged with crimes against humanity following the deaths of more than 3,000 Ivorians.
His electoral victor Ouattara is recovering from surgery to alleviate pain linked to sciatica, the medical term given to the compression of the sciatic nerve—the body’s longest— which often affects the leg and lower back.
Hospitalised in France for a month, the drip-drop nature of information from officials only served to fuel speculation that he was really in bad shape, a perception Ouattara sought to dispel immediately on arrival.
“As you can see, I’ve returned in good shape. I’m doing well. I’m in perfect health,” he told the cheering crowd in Abidjan, the commercial capital.
As if to prove the point, the Ivorian leader has in recent weeks taken up a flurry of official arrangements, all covered by state media, from hosting Morocco’s monarch in a high-profile visit to being projected on television attending to a number of diplomatic engagements.
The Ivorian leader last Wednesday chaired his first Cabinet meeting since January 22, a gathering which he had himself announced following talks with visiting Benin leader Thomas Yayi Boni at his Cocody residence.
President Boni is among the legion of regional leaders who have been trooping in to see Ouattara. According to media reports, Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé and Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore also dropped in.
Mr Ouattara is the current political head of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) regional bloc, partly explaining the wide concern.
Troubled Liberia-Ivorian border
But the regional concern is also grounded on the understanding that a stable Cote d’Ivoire is in the best interests of neighbours struggling with their own security challenges: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mali. Its border with Liberia has been particularly porous and deadly, with mercenaries frequently making incursions into Ivorian territory.
During the 2010 electoral crisis, Gbagbo’s colleagues came up empty in widely-watched attempts to convince an African leader to hand over power peacefully.
With the country’s neighbours also mirroring the fragility in Cote d’Ivoire, how Ouattara shapes up in the run-up to elections in the second half of next year will matter to many outside the country.
Liberia’s border with Cote d’Ivoire is an issue that has caused much angst between the two countries. Liberia is home to thousands of Ivorian refugees yet to go home.
For landlocked Mali, the all-important Highway 7 is at risk wherever there is an Ivorian crisis. On any given day close to 1,000 trucks ferry goods through the Ivorian border town of Zegoua. A threat to this trade would further batter Mali’s already thin national finances. About 70 per cent of Malian goods pass through the Ivorian port of Abidjan.
For eastern neighbour Ghana, any instability in Cote d’Ivoire has an impact on its stability, with some notable Gbagbo supporters in exile there. Several people have been killed in attacks Cote d’Ivoire says are launched from Ghana, leading to cyclic closures of the nearly 700km border – and to diplomatic tensions. The border post town of Noé is a particular hotspot.
Already, internally fragile Guinea has no appetite for further instability in Cote d’Ivoire, with which it already shares a decades-old border dispute.
For Ouattara, the biggest election issue remains progress on reconciling the bitterly divided country, with some divisions spanning back to the unstable years in the 1990s.
Reconciliation impasse
He has made tentative steps towards reconciliation, but as the International Crisis Group in its most recent report on the country noted, this must be extended to the western region, which is beset by land, security and identity problems.
The west of the country – particularly the Cavally and Guémon regions—was the area most hit outside the capital Abidjan in the 2010- 2011 conflict.
The region is a stronghold of former President Gbagbo and remains wary of what it has termed “victor’s justice” – Outtara’s demand that justice go hand in hand with reconciliation but which has been seen as selective.
The country’s Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CDVR) mandate ended last September, and it is hard to find an outright positive review for the body that has been hamstrung by funding woes and legal and political interference.
The CDVR handed Ouattara a report detailing abuses, but the commission has been heavily criticised for recommending little else by way of healing the rifts.
To add to the flux, Gbagbo’s party, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), is also experiencing some sort of renaissance. Ouattara has made overtures towards the party by releasing its members held without trial since 2011, including its head Pascal AffiN’guessan, a gesture that seemed to thaw relations somewhat.
However observers say the release may be a way of getting Ouattara allies off the hook.
The two parties are in tentative talks mediated by Senegalese President Macky Sall. However, relations remain decidedly frosty. Essentially the FPI is waiting for the ICC’s decision on whether it will confirm charges against Gbagbo with many supporters hopeful he will be released.
If this were to happen it would complicate matters enormously for Ouattara’s young government. A third column—former President Henri Konan Bédié’s Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) – could be a dark horse in the elections.
The deliberations are necessary to secure the participation of the FPI in upcoming elections, helping the reconciliation effort and lessening the zero-sum scenario of electoral competition, itself abetted by the country’s dated and French-inspired constitution.
Economic recovery
While the October 2015 election is vital for the country’s recouping its tarnished credentials, the preparations have not earned rave reviews.
Campaigns are already in full flow, even before the country’s electoral authorities figure out how to run a credible ballot. Voter listing and setting up an electoral commission appear to be the most urgent, but the authorities are fast running out of time.
Other reform areas are also lagging. The Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Authority (ADDR) says it has managed to reintegrate 27,000 of the targeted 30,000 ex-combatants, but pro-regime militia such as the Dozo remain on the loose.
UN head of Cote d’Ivoire operations Aichatou Mindaoudou in January told the Security Council that security sector reforms are urgently needed, to go with the re-integration and justice reforms.
UN independent expert Doudou Diène echoed this following a two-week visit last month to the country of close to 20 million.
On a more reassuring note, Ouattara’s economic record is less convoluted, even sparking talk of a new “economic miracle” following the heady years of the 1960s-1980s. There has been talk of a return to the country by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in what would be a major fillip for the trained economist’s efforts.
Major infrastructure projects such as motorways and French-built bridges are visible, but investment remains stymied by uncertainty.
In 2011 the Ivorian economy shrunk by 4.7 per cent, grew to 9.8 per cent in 2012, 8.7 per cent last year and is projected to touch 8-10 per cent this year, according to available data. Much of this is new growth, but concerns remain over wealth redistribution.
The country climbed six places on the bank’s Doing Business 2014 raking, but remains at a lowly position 167. Among the lowest ranked indicators are the payment of taxes and the protection of investors.
The Mo Ibrahim 2013 governance index ranked Côte d’Ivoire at 44 out 52 African countries, and 15 out of 16 West African states.
Clearly there still is a lot of work to for the incumbent, including making the country’s $24 billion National Development Plan for 2012-2015 viable. The coming year will be crucial for the country, and for West Africa.
NMG
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