Cote d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) is a West African state with a population of around 20 million. The country is best-known for two reasons. The first is that it is the world’s largest exporter of cocoa; the second reason has to do with the country’s eccentric, French colonial-style former ruler, Felix Houphouet-Boigny who came to power in 1959 and was re-elected to office six times. On five of those six occasions there was a conspicuous absence of opposition. Houphouet-Boigny died in office in 1993.
Houphouet- Boigny’s re-election to the presidency for his seventh term in 1990 marked the first occasion on which he ran against an opposition candidate, Laurent Gbagbo. Not unexpectedly, Gbagbo lost. In 2000 he was to secure the presidency of the Ivory Coast though in the period immediately following the poll his opponent, a retired army general named Robert Guei, who was heading the military junta that had seized power a year earlier refused to accept the poll result. Guei was eventually forced out by popular protest and Gbagbo served his first five-year term, up to 2005, surviving a 2002 military coup in the process. Between the end of his first term and the 2010 poll, elections were set aside several times for one reason or another. By all accounts except those of his own Constitutional Council, Gbagbo lost the November 2010 general elections. The UN elections observer mission has pronounced in favour of his opponent, Alassane Ouattara and the African Union has raised the spectre of force to remove him. Still, Gbagbo refuses to go. The Sorbonne-educated historian, cannot, it seems, accept the reality of loss of power.
All this of course is occurring at a time when the historic façade of autocratic rule in the Middle East and North Africa is crumbling under successive waves of ‘people power’ uprisings. What Gbagbo’s gambit has done is to cast the spotlight for the umpteenth time on the nature of political power and the intoxicating hold that it can have on those who have tasted it. Gbagbo, it seems, has simply decided that enough, after all, is not enough. He has chosen, with the support of the military, to cling to all of the formal trappings of office. Mr. Ouattara has responded by creating a parallel administration which, of course, renders the country ungovernable in the conventional democratic way. Gbagbo’s illusion that he is still the Ivorian President now causes the country to resemble a humourless pantomime.
Ironically, Gbagbo’s past provides no clues to his present posture. During the 1970’s he had gained recognition as a pro-democracy leader of student demonstrations against the Houphouet-Boigny regime. His challenge to Houphouet-Boigny in 1990, the first time that the then ruler had ever faced an opponent at the polls actually raised hopes that democratic rule might be at hand in the Ivory Coast. Having tasted power Gbagbo, it seems may have decided even before last year’s elections that he would hold on to power with or without the constitutional bona fides with which to do so.
Since Houphouet-Boigny’s death the Ivorian military has proven to be an unreliable ally and Gbagbo may well be overlooking the fact that as international pressure and domestic political and economic instability combine to render the Ivory Coast increasingly unstable the military, as it has done in the relatively recent past, may either choose to seize power for itself or to change sides. In effect – and with Mr. Ouatarra recognized by much of the country and the international community as the legitimate President – Mr. Gbagbo may, perhaps sooner rather than later, run out of viable options.
Laurent Gbagbo provides a sobering reminder that the days of political strongmen in Africa and elsewhere are far from over and that democracy can be a fragile condition, vulnerable to ambush by politicians whose thirst for power renders them unmindful of the rule of law. Africa has long had to wear a dubious label as the continent of ‘big men.’ Indeed, that is what makes the efforts of the African Union to mediate in the Ivorian crisis more than a trifle farcical. Its presidential panel set up in Addis Ababa recently to mediate in the crisis includes Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Burkino Faso’s Blaise Campaore, Chad’s Idris Deby and Mauritania’s Abdel Aziz, none of whom hold office through transparent and undisputed elections and one of whom, Blaise Campaore came to power in a bloody coup. Campaore chose to absent himself from the panel’s recent visit to the Ivory Coast after his own political enemies made threats on his life.
Gbagbo, no doubt, is aware that there is bound to be a hollow ring to any calls from the panel for him to demit office and that is likely to provide him with a generous measure of comfort. Setting aside the crisis that is now manifesting itself in the Ivory Coast analysts have even suggested that the posture of the one-time Ivorian academic sets a disturbing example for the rest of the region where other regimes may come to feel that the results of polls need not be respected. Even if that turns out not to be the case Africa can do without another protracted civil war at a time when areas of the continent are already reduced to the status of failed states by political instability and economic collapse. The quicker Laurent Gbagbo gives up his charade and removes himself from the Ivorian political process the better it will be for his people and for the continent as a whole.
