The Lightning Rod President

Ivory Coast’s new president has made many enemies over the years. Can he bring peace?

BY DANIEL BALINT-KURTI | APRIL 29, 2011

"Terrorist." "Foreigner." "Vampire." Alassane Dramane Ouattara has been a magnet for some scathing insults over the past 20 years in Ivory Coast, the West African country of which he has just become president after a four-month conflict with his rival, Laurent Gbagbo. Despite the animosity against him, stoked for years by successive regimes, Ouattara won last November's presidential election fair and square. But taking power wasn't so easy. Gbagbo, the incumbent, refused to step down, claiming he had actually been the victor. It took an all-out military assault on the commercial capital Abidjan -- aided by French and U.N. troops -- to get Gbagbo out. Even then, the outgoing president refused to concede defeat, leaving Ouattara to try to govern and reconcile a country where only just over half the people voted for him.

Ivory Coast is in bad shape. Civil servants are owed weeks of salaries, banks have been ransacked, and migrants, vital to the country's economy, have fled in droves. With his record as a technocrat and economic reformer, the new president has the skills and background to nurture the country back to health. But whether he has the political chops is another question altogether. Ouattara's enemies are still seething over the violence committed by his armed supporters and over his backing from France, the much-hated former colonial master. A polarizing figure, Ouattara's biggest obstacle in the coming months may be himself.

How did Ouattara, a soft-spoken man who was once among the top officials at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), come to be such a divisive figure? The short answer is that rival politicians have long feared Ouattara's popularity, and for years they have done all in their power to counter it with rumors, accusations, and often outright lies -- all part of an effort to ensure he would not assume the presidency. Writing in her memoirs, for example, Gbagbo's wife Simone said of Ouattara, "I arrived at the conviction that this man was dangerous, without scruples, without faith or law.... Alassane Ouattara turned out to be a real scourge for our country."

Ouattara arrived on the political scene in April 1990, when Ivory Coast's founding father and president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, appointed him as economic czar. Houphouët had already been in power for three decades, running a dictatorship that was mostly benevolent. But during his rule, Ivory Coast behaved as if it were banking on a never-ending economic boom, borrowing lavishly from France, the IMF, and the World Bank to invest in infrastructure and private enterprises. Thanks to a successful agricultural sector, notably including the world's largest cocoa harvest, Ivory Coast's economy grew by 7.5 percent a year on average from 1960 to 1980, putting it among the 15 fastest-growing economies in the world. By the end of this period, however, cocoa prices were falling and the so-called Ivorian miracle began to peter out. In May 1987, the country suspended repayment of its $13.5 billion foreign debt. Houphouët was facing the deepest crisis of his rule.

In dire need of economic help, Houphouët saw Ouattara, then the governor of the Central Bank of West African States, as just the man for the job. Without dropping his post as Central Bank governor, Ouattara, then 48 and a father of two by his American ex-wife, leapt at the chance to enter government.

Installed in his top-floor, air-conditioned office in an ultra-modern skyscraper, Ouattara drew up a set of reforms. The measures, which became known as "the Ouattara plan," were a gentler version of the reforms that had been pushed by the IMF and the World Bank. He ruled out wage cuts after a wave of protests in the preceding months. Instead, Ouattara sought to make savings by making the rich pay their taxes and ending widespread customs fraud. He told civil servants to follow his example by turning up for work at 7:30 a.m. and foregoing the usual three-hour lunch break, taking instead just one hour. He aimed to cut state spending by a quarter, boost tax collection by a third, and erase a $768 million budget deficit. His strategy was successful in macroeconomic terms. But it divided Ivorians, earning him many domestic enemies even as he was being lauded abroad.

PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP/Getty Images

 

Daniel Balint-Kurti worked as a journalist in Ivory Coast, among other countries, from 1999 to 2007. In September 2007 he published a paper on Ivory Coast's rebel Forces Nouvelles for Chatham House. He now heads the Democratic Republic of the Congo campaign at Global Witness. He writes in his personal capacity.

CHRISAK

2:04 PM ET

April 30, 2011

Three significant misstatements or omissions

I found three significant, easily verifiable misstatements or omissions in this piece--all of them, strangely, concentrated in a single paragraph on page 3:

1. "Bédié was eventually toppled in a 1999 Christmas Eve coup d'état by Houphouët's old army chief, General Robert Guéï."

Omission/misstatement: In fact, Bedie was toppled by a group of minor soldiers led by Ibrahim Coulibaly, a former bodyguard of Alassane Ouattara, who then chose, for one reason or another, to hand control to General Guei. Mr. Coulibaly was killed a few days ago by his rivals among other Ouattara loyalists.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13227665

2. "The new leader managed to ban Ouattara from standing in a snap election held in 2000 but, against his expectations, lost to his only competitor, Gbagbo."

Omission/misstatement: In fact, Mr. Ouattara became ineligible based on a constitutional REFERENDUM in which 2.3 million Ivorians (against 0.3 million people) voted to require both parents of presidential candidates to have been Ivorians. At least one of Ouattara's parents was not Ivorian.

The referendum was indeed organized while Guei was in power. However, the voting process and the result were uncontroverted.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivorian_constitutional_referendum,_2000

3. "In a move that was to repeat itself in 2010, Guéï refused to accept defeat and his soldiers mowed down pro-Gbagbo protesters. Ouattara's supporters, meanwhile, took to the streets, calling for a new election. Bloody crackdowns and ethnic riots followed."

Omission/misstatement: In fact, Guei refused to accept defeat, the president of his constitutional body refused to swear him in, and pro-Gbagbo protesters actually kicked him out in a few days. It is only after Gbagbo was sworn in that pro-Ouattara protesters took to the streets to call for a new election. (Of course, in light of the constitutional provision mentioned in note 2 above, it would have been impossible legally for Ouattara to become a candidate; so the reasons for the protest were presumably a little more complex. One should note also that Ouattara became eligible in the 2010 elections based solely on a special presidential decree signed by... Mr. Gbagbo!)

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/Storyold/163892/

Important contrast: in 2010, although Gbagbo refused to accept defeat, he also asked for a recount, was sworn in by his constitutional body and--perhaps most importantly--pro-Ouattara supporters were unable to kick him out after several months (creating a little skepticism about Ouattara's popularity claims).

...

Here is what I noticed in the Ivorian crisis: for one reason or another, non-African reporting on the crisis (with few exceptions, of course) somehow passed over crucial (though sometimes technical) details of history and, especially, law. In my opinion the resulting reports contributed to legitimizing what eventually happened: the use of radical violence by one party, with the support of a clearly-interested French government, against the other, on the basis of a thin (at most) if not controverted (at least) electoral majority. (Whether French support took the form of military assistance, logistical assistance, diplomatic assitance, or whatever else, is essentially irrelevant so long as we recognize the obvious fact that said support was decisive.)

This dismissive journalistic attitude toward the vexing complexities of the Ivorian crisis reduced its meaning, its stakes and--by extension--the lives of the Ivorians. No wonder it became possible after that for one party to justify perpetrating unheard of massacres in the country's western region.

(Source: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/09/c-te-d-ivoire-ouattara-forces-kill-rape-civilians-during-offensive.)

This piece displays only a minor manifestation of this problem--minor because it does contain valuable information and analysis otherwise.

Too bad, if only because this Ivorian story could have been presented as a first, great example of the difficult interplay between development, nationalism, legalism and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. That crisis set a number of fascinating precedents.

 

CLíNICA MASSAGISTA

7:04 PM ET

May 6, 2011

Misstatements or Omissions...

ya, This piece displays only a minor manifestation of this problem--minor because it does contain valuable information and analysis otherwise. Thanks!!!
massagista

 

JIBRAN_PCC

1:32 AM ET

May 11, 2011

Here is what I noticed in the

Here is what I noticed in the Ivorian crisis: for one reason or another, non-African reporting on the crisis (with few exceptions, of course) somehow passed over crucial (though sometimes technical) details of history and, especially, law. In my opinion the resultinghow to make big money reports contributed to legitimizing what eventually happened: the use of radical violence by one party, with the support of a clearly-interested French government, against the other, on the basis of a thin (at most) if not controverted (at least) electoral majority.

 

BCOBB107

2:51 PM ET

May 28, 2011

President

In the six months between the second round of elections and this inauguration ceremony, Ivory Coast has witnessed some of its darkest days. But this ceremony is meant to draw a line under those troubles. Tens of thousands watched on big screens around the capital and lined the streets leading from the airport. Inside, about 20 heads of state from Africa joined President Sarkozy in the marble-lined Felix Houphouet-Boigny foundation for the ceremony. this Gbagbo didn't coin the term, but for years his regime exploited such sentiment. Youth Minister Charles Ble Goude, who headed a volatile pro-Gbagbo youth militia called the Young Patriots, was accused by Human Rights Watch in a report last month of fanning xenophobic attacks in February, when he called on true Ivorians to set up roadblocks in their neighborhoods and "denounce" foreigners.

 

JULIA MIRON

3:00 PM ET

May 28, 2011

The Lightning Rod

Unlike in ordinary democracies, the French version of democracy is a special case. By tradition in France, foreign affairs are the French president's private domain. The foreign affairs minister only applies his policies. France is the only Western country where foreign policy is not a debating topic in the national legislative bodies. The sovereignty of the French people does not count for anything even if it has elected the president directly. The Parliament has no checking powers and is quietly relegated to domestic matters. retirement Ouattara was forced to take the oath of office inside the hotel lobby in a ceremony attended only by his closest aides.
By contrast, the lavish ceremony on Saturday was attended by some 20 heads of state in a show of international support for the democratically elected leader. Hundreds of people were killed in the political standoff that consumed the nation, first by the army controlled by Gbagbo and later in reprisal killings by soldiers fighting to install Ouattara.