IVORY COAST: Former prime minister and opposition leader Alassane Ouattara announces his presidential bid in elections next year

Supporters of the Ivorian Republican Party came in their thousands to celebrate the party's 13th anniversary, and welcome their leader's first address at a rally in Abidjan in more than five years. Main opposition candidate and Ivory Coast's former prime minister Alassane Ouattara was excluded from a presidential poll in 2000 on nationality grounds. Speaking in Abidjan at his party's first rally since the 2002-2003 civil war, Ouattara said he is confident about the future. "You can count on me, my victory is in 2008. In 2008 we will be at the presidential palace," Ouattara said to the thousands of his supporters in the Abobo district in Abidjan. "It's clear from seeing the people here in front of us, with this gathering which represents a cross-section, that Gbagbo cannot win the elections," he added. Ouattara's exclusion from the last presidential poll, which was won by socialist leader Laurent Gbagbo, triggered ethnic and communal violence rarely seen in once-stable Ivory Coast. The conflict left the nation split into a rebel-held north and government-controlled south. Rebels said people from the largely Muslim north were treated as foreigners by southern Christian tribes. Addressing the rally, Ouattara said he wants to fight for the young generation of Ivorians, on a united front: "Together we will rebuild Ivory Coast, we are going to show that Ivory Coast is the country that you the young generation dream of," he said. The peace process in the world's top cocoa grower saw little progress since a 2003 ceasefire until a breakthrough deal last March between Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro, who agreed upon reunification through disarmament and elections. A controversial scheme to give identity papers to thousands of people and enable many of them to vote was relaunched last week, in a step forward for the war-divided country's peace process. Identity was a root cause of the 2002-2003 civil war, and the scheme is key to the country's peace process but is eyed with suspicion by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo who fear non-nationals supporting the opposition may fraudulently obtain Ivorian nationality and swell the voting register. "It's a good meeting, that came at the right time. It was about time that the president started to talk, to address the supporters and bring them together, particularly with the beginning of the identification process," said Toungara Fanta, one of Ouattara's supporters at the rally. "Everybody fights for their political leader. If he is sure of himself that he will go in 2008, we should wait to see, it's the elections that will decide what the truth is. It's only talk of the street to say that I will win, I will win, it's at the polls where the truth will be decided," said Antoinnette Gangan Sidje, a resident of Abidjan, traditionally a pro-Gbagbo stronghold. The identity scheme ran for several months last year before grinding to a halt after a political dispute over which documents should be issued at the "mobile court" hearings which are usually set up in town halls or public buildings. Apart from the future disarmament process, identification is one of the most tricky aspects of the peace deal in terms of garnering political support among Gbagbo supporters as well as logistical constraints. "It's going to be ok, the people are there, we are obliged to do this. So we have come to help our children obtain their documents, because, since the war started we haven't had any papers here, so we have come to help them obtain their documents," said Kone Lassina. Scores of teams of judges and also doctors who will seek to determine the age of individual applicants, will gradually be deployed around the country for the process which is supposed to last three months but which analysts expect to last much longer. Fuelling fears that accusations of fraud could resurface, the head of Gbagbo's FPI party said recently only 300,000 people required documents, a fraction of the government's estimate of up to 3.5 million.

ITN Source | October 6, 2007

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