Opposition Election Boycott Underlines Ivorian Short-Term Risks

Elections are still scheduled to take place in eight days (31 October) despite a boycott by two of the four presidential candidates. This further underpins the probability of incumbent Alassane Ouattara winning and continued violent incidents even after polling day. Under the baseline scenario, the opposition will not accept the result, nor be satisfied with international or domestic redress in the short term. There are important mitigants when the current situation is contrasted with Cote d’Ivoire’s 2010-11 nadir. Nevertheless, work done to maintain economic growth during the covid-19 pandemic is undermined by uncertainty about the level of security risk.

Main Findings

From a field of 44, only four candidates were eventually cleared by the electoral commission (Commission électorale indépendante, CEI) to stand in the 31st October polls; current president, Alassane Ouattara of the Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix (RHDP); former president Henri Konan Bedie representing Parti Démocratique de la Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI); leader of the Front populaire ivoirien (FPI), Pascal Affi N’Guessan and Kouadio Konan Bertin, formerly of the PDCI but now an independent candidate. Whilst these are the names that will appear on the ballot papers, N’Guessan and Bedie have called for an active boycott of the election and effectively withdrawn their candidacy, calling on their supporters to not allow the polls to take place. They have been calling for (a) reforms to the CEI, which they see as biased toward the RHDP and (b) the cancellation of the candidacy of Ouattara, who is standing for a contested third term following the death of the original RHDP candidate, Amadou Gon Coulibaly.

Small-scale and sometimes fatal clashes between opposition protestors and the security forces have been the order of the day since Ouattara made his announcement to stand in August. These have increased since the FPI and PDCI called for civil disobedience alongside their election boycott. The clashes are centred mostly around opposition strongholds in cities and towns such as Bonoua, Bongouanou and certain neighbourhoods of the commercial capital, Abidjan. Since August, there are thought to have been at least 20 fatalities. Some politically active sources on the ground have said that there is a concern over ‘false-flag’ attacks that are instigated by actors close to the ruling party but made to seem as if they were perpetrated by opposition protesters, justifying a heavy-handed crackdown on their activities. Recent attacks on FPI offices are thought to be examples of this. What is keenly apparent is that a vast majority of the population does not want a return to the brief civil war that resulted from the disputed 2010 elections, to paraphrase a colleague “sometimes stability is preferable to democracy.” This means that clashes are likely to remain between protestors and security forces with a lowered chance of ethnic escalations that lead to mass violence. In contrast with 2010-11, Cote d’Ivoire is also spared the presence of large scale rival armed forces in its territory. Nevertheless, the country is not entirely insulated.

Cote d’Ivoire has shown laudable resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic compared to both global and regional peers – the government is still expecting 1.8% growth for 2020, this is a large reduction from the forecast 7.X% but well ahead of the downgraded regional average of -3.8%. Much of this hard work is being put at risk by the political uncertainty. On a recent call, a senior figure in a leading professional services firm said that they are already seeing projects being postponed and expansions halted, with decisions on next steps to be taken only after 31st October. One key tactic used by protestors is to erect rudimentary roadblocks at strategic points within and on routes out of urban areas, this will have a significant knock-on effect on the movement of goods throughout the country, especially key agricultural goods that account for around 20% of GDP and 40% of exports. As the world’s largest producer, cocoa is obviously key within this, a lack of state involvement in the supply chain, however, effects will be limited to logistical challenges.  A female social entrepreneur has also highlighted the difficulties posed by the uncertainty – “we were hit hard by Covid-19 with estimates that 40% of SMEs had shut down. Now, we are faced with hesitancy at all stages of our supply chains as people speculate what the next few months holds.”

Conclusion

For now the baseline scenario assumes elections on 31st October with Ouattara being declared winner. This is despite the FPI, PDCI and Guillaume Soro insisting that they will put a halt to the ballot – no strategy for how this can be achieved has yet been outlined. There is little unity amongst the opposition actors other than their belief that Ouattara’s third term is unconstitutional and plans on how to move forward have been disjointed.

The real question comes as to what happens once Ouattara has been declared victorious. Opposition candidates have made it clear they have no faith in domestic dispute mechanisms such as the Constitutional Council, so a legal challenge is unlikely. Intervention from the AU or ECOWAS also seems unlikely. The opposition parties are seeking mediation from ECOWAS at this time, but government will allow the regional bloc only an observer status in any dialogue, not the facilitator role the FPI & PDCI seek – a red line for the opposition.

NB a recent ECOWAS mission to Abidjan ended with their representative telling the opposition parties to end their boycott and consider the wider implications of their actions[1]. The Ivorian state has neglected recommendations from the African Court of Human and Peoples Rights to allow Laurent Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro to stand in the election as well as implement CEI reforms. There has been no pressure from the AU, ECOWAS, or any international partners to implement these recommendations, rather Cote d’Ivoire withdrew from the ACHPR charter.

France is more likely to play a mediation role than African partners but, president Emmanuel Macron has been criticised for his “deafening silence” aside from suggesting a delay in the polls at a meeting with Ouattara in September, a request that was politely rebuffed. That leaves the vastly unpopular option of continued protest and violent clashes with the general population being the determiners of how far it will go. Aside from a lack of unity, the opposition candidates have shown a paucity of policy and a lack of true confidence in their ability to defeat Ouattara, this may push many to settle for the devil they know over that they don’t.

[1] There are also lingering questions about the ability of ECOWAS to successfully mediate or intervene in political crises as shown by recent failures in Mali (in which Ouattara took a particularly harsh stance) and a lack of commentary thus far on the civil unrest in Nigeria.

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