Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara and his main rival, Henri Konan Bédié, were in talks for the first time Wednesday since an election crisis that has claimed scores of lives.

Ouattara and Bédié, an 86-year-old former president, arrived at an upmarket hotel in Abidjan amid a swarm of reporters, several hours after the much-awaited meeting was announced by the government.

“It was a first meeting to break the ice and restore trust,” President Ouattara said.

Opposition chief Bédié added: “We have been able to break through the wall of ice and the wall of silence.”

The two men said further meetings would also take place.

Their talks are the first since Ouattara secured the October 31 election by more than 94 percent but the West African nation is mired in a dispute after opposition leaders rejected the vote, accusing him of breaching the two-term limit for the presidency.

More clashes broke out over Ouattara’s reelection on Tuesday as West African nations and France called for dialogue to end tensions over his contested third term.

Communications Minister Sidi Tiémoko Touré told reporters that the official toll now stood at 85 dead and 484 injured, many of them in the southeast of the country. Of the fatalities, 34 occurred before the election, 20 on voting day and 31 afterwards.

Touré added that 225 people had been arrested, of whom 45 were in custody and 167 had been charged.

The country’s top court validated Ouattara’s election victory on Monday.

Traumatic memories

For many Ivorians, painful memories have been stirred of the aftermath of disputed elections in 2010 that unleashed a brief civil war in the West African country, claiming around 3,000 lives and prompting an estimated 1.3 million people to flee their homes.

The face-to-face between Ouattara and Bedie follows a clamour from the UN, EU, former colonial power France and Ivory Coast’s neighbours for efforts to ease the tension.

The country is the world’s top cocoa producer and its major city, Abidjan, is a regional business hub.

More than 8,000 people have streamed out of the country to seek refuge in neighbouring states, especially Liberia, the UN’s refugee agency said on Tuesday.

More than half of them are children, many of whom have arrived unaccompanied or separated from their parents.

Conditions

Ouattara, in a speech on Monday, proposed a meeting with Bedie, whom he respectfully described as his “elder”.

In its response, Bedie’s PDCI party on Wednesday set down several conditions for such talks, including the lifting of the home blockades and the end of judicial procedures against arrested leaders.

Ouattara and Bedie have been central figures in Ivorian politics for decades, with each claiming the mantel of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the highly popular first post-independence president.

The venue for their meeting, the Golf Hotel in Abidjan, has historic resonance. It was where Ouattara, as president-elect, set up his headquarters during the 2010-2011 crisis when the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down after being defeated at the ballot box.

Ouattara’s erstwhile allies at the hotel included Bedie; the two men fell out in 2018.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara has provisionally won a third term in office with 94.27% of the vote, the electoral commission announced early on Tuesday, after a bitter election that sparked deadly violence and was boycotted by opposition voters.

“Thus elected president of the republic, Alassane Ouattara,” Kuibiert-Coulibaly Ibrahime, the head of the electoral commission announced.

He said the final turnout for the Oct. 31 election was at 53.90%.

The results have to be validated by the country’s constitutional council which will declare the final winner after hearing any challenges or complaints of irregularities.

Ouattara, 78, received over 90% in most districts in Saturday’s vote, although the opposition said his bid was an illegal attempt to hold onto power.

The Ivorian constitution limits presidents to two terms, but Ouattara says the approval of a new constitution in 2016 allowed him to restart his mandate.

The disagreement led to clashes in the lead up to the vote, in which at least 30 people died. At least five more were killed on Saturday, officials said.

The country was spared the widespread violence that many feared would erupt during voting, but many Ivorians fear that the country could experience longer term unrest.

Source: REUTERS

A total of 21 people have been killed in unrest in Guinea following a disputed presidential election last week, state television reported on Monday, as international envoys attempted to soothe tensions in the West African nation.

The RTG state news channel said that 21 people had been killed since October 19, including officers of the security forces – six fewer than figures compiled by the opposition which claims 27 have died.

President Alpha Condé, 82, won a hotly contested October 18 election according to official results announced Saturday, setting the stage for a controversial third term.

But his main opponent Cellou Dalein Diallo, 68, disputes the results. He claimed victory last week, citing data his activists gathered at individual polling stations.

Diallo’s self-proclaimed victory led to a week of clashes between supporters and security forces across the nation.

The government had previously put the number of dead at 10.

A diplomatic delegation from the United Nations, African Union and the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States landed in Guinea Sunday in the aftermath of the unrest.

The envoys – who include ECOWAS Commission President Jean-Claude Kassi Brou and the UN special representative to West Africa, Mohamed Ibn Chambas – met several ministers and government officials on Monday.

An ECOWAS official in Conakry said they also spoke with representatives of Guinea’s electoral commission and foreign diplomats.

Diallo told AFP that the envoys met him too, at his Conakry home which police have blockaded for days.

Anti-Condé protests were due to resume in the city early Monday and many shops stayed shut, but few people ended up hitting the streets in the end.

“In my neighbourhood, people say they are waiting to see the outcome of the joint mission,” said a suburban resident who declined to be named.

Scars from the unrest were apparent in the Conakry neighbourhood of Wanindara – an opposition stronghold – with burned-out vehicles lying on the roadside.

Mohamed Saliou Camara, whose house was torched, said Conde and Diallo supporters had clashed in the area.

Much of the turbulence centres on a third term for Alpha Condé, whom opponents accuse of drifting into authoritarianism.

He pushed through a new constitution in March which he argued would modernise the country. But it also allowed him to bypass a two-term limit for presidents.

Source: AFP

Alpha Conde won Guinea’s disputed presidential poll, the national electoral authority said Saturday, setting the stage for a controversial third term.

Announcing provisional results, electoral authority president Kabinet Cisse said that Conde, 82, had won 59.49 percent of the votes in the October 18 election.

His main opponent Cellou Dalein Diallo, — at the forefront of protests against a third term for Conde —  was credited with 33.5 percent of the vote.

“Long live democracy, long live peace, may God bless Guinea,” Cisse said during a ceremony in Conakry, as Conde supporters leapt to their feet and cheered the president’s victory.

The announcement follows days of post-election violence in which around 10 people were killed in clashes across the nation of some 13 million people.

Doubting the independence of the electoral authority, Diallo, 68, had on Monday declared himself victorious before the results were announced — which triggered confrontations between his supporters and security forces.

Protesters hit the streets of Conakry again Saturday, and residents of some suburbs said police officers were firing tear-gas cannisters to clear them off.

“We’re on the street until Cellou Dalein asks us to come home,” said one, who declined to be named, referring to the opposition leader.

Diallo told AFP he would mount a legal challenge to the announced election results.

“We are going to protest this electoral hold-up in the street,” he said.

“But we are still going to refer the matter to the constitutional court, without having too many expectations”.

Third term

While Guinea’s independent national electoral commission (CENI) declared the provisional tally, the constitutional court must still approve the result. It is expected to do so in about a week.

With his win, Conde is set to govern for another six years, and could potentially run for another fourth term after that.

Stiff opposition to a third term triggered mass protests from October 2019, in which security forces killed dozens of people.

In March, the president pushed through a new constitution which he argued would modernise the country.

The move also allowed him to bypass a two-term limit for presidents.

Guinea is a poor country, despite rich deposits of bauxite, gold and diamonds, that has known little political stability since independence in 1958.

Conde, a former opposition activist who spent decades in exile, became the country’s first democratically-elected president in 2010, and was re-elected in 2015.

But hopes of a new political dawn have soured, with rights groups accusing him of veering towards authoritarianism.

Diallo was formerly a prime minister under authoritarian leader Lansana Conte. He ran against Conde in both 2010 and 2015.

‘Violence must stop’

Diallo’s self-proclaimed victory plunged Guinea into a fresh round of violence.

The opposition says 27 people were killed, and AFP was unable to independently confirm the official death toll of 10.

Five people died Friday on the outskirts of Conakry when a train carrying fuel was attacked after the rail tracks were sabotaged.

In another confused incident, at least three gendarmes, a soldier and civilian were killed in a Conakry suburb the same day, according to government official who declined to be named.

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has warned that the rival parties could be prosecuted after fighting erupted.

“We are… continuing to closely monitor developments on the ground. The violence must stop,” Fatou Bensouda said in a tweet.

“I wish to repeat this important reminder: anyone who commits, orders, incites, encourages and contributes in any other way to crimes… is liable to prosecution either by the Guinean courts or the ICC,” she said.

The campaign was fraught with tension ahead of the vote. Conde was accused of stoking ethnic divisions for electoral ends, a charge he denies.

Guinea’s politics are mainly drawn along ethnic lines: the president’s base is among the ethnic Malinke community while Diallo has strong backing among the Fulani people.

(AFP)

African monitors said Tuesday that Guinea’s weekend election was conducted properly, but the political opposition to incumbent Alpha Conde, which has already claimed victory, dismissed it as fraudulent.

Preliminary results for four of the country’s 38 voting districts released by electoral commission chief Kabinet Cisse late Tuesday showed a strong lead for Conde over his main challenger Cellou Dalein Diallo, who had claimed victory Monday.

In three of the four districts, Conde secured more than the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff vote, although an electoral commission official told AFP it was “impossible to extrapolate” to the final national result, expected later this week.

“Alpha Conde is doing everything possible to change ballot-box results in his favour,” Diallo’s campaign director Fode Oussou Fofana had earlier told reporters in the capital Conakry.

The opposition campaign has been setting the stage for an election dispute, with Fofana accusing the government of “large-scale fraud” in counting ballots from the hotly contested October 18 poll.

Conde, 82, is seeking a controversial third presidential term, a move that has triggered months of deadly unrest in the West African nation.

But earlier on Tuesday, monitors from regional African blocs cast the vote as mostly fair.

Augustin Matata Ponyo, the African Union’s head of mission in Guinea, said the ballot took place “in transparency”, for example. The head of the West African ECOWAS monitoring mission also said the vote was lawful.

Celebrations in Conakry of Diallo’s self-proclaimed victory quickly descended into violent clashes with security forces, in which several youngsters were shot dead, opposition officials said.

AFP was unable to independently confirm the deaths, but an AFP journalist saw three injured people and heard gunfire in a Conakry suburb on Monday night.

Meanwhile in a seeming response to Diallo’s self-proclaimed win, security forces dressed in riot gear surrounded his house in the capital. He tweeted that he was trapped inside.

‘Irresponsible and dangerous’

Security forces killed dozens of people in protests against a Conde third term, which began in October last year.

Although polling day was mostly calm, Diallo’s self-proclaimed election victory has ratched up tensions in the former French colony of some 13 million people.

The government insists the vote was fair and that only the official electoral authority can declare the results.

Conde’s RPG party also called Diallo’s move “irresponsible and dangerous” on Monday.

The international community is concerned too. The United Nations, African Union, and the 15-nation ECOWAS called the premature declaration of results “regrettable”, in a joint statement on Monday.

“This state of affairs is not conducive to preserving calm,” the statement said.

But on Tuesday, the communications director for Diallo’s UFDG party, Ousmane Gaoual Diallo, said the party’s own analysis of polling data collected from individual stations showed the opposition leader had won over 50 percent of the votes.

The official polling-station reports sent to the electoral authority are “completely different” to the actual results, he told AFP.

Twelve candidates are vying for the presidency, but Conde and Diallo are the frontrunners.

‘Chaos’

Guinea’s government said in a statement Monday that the opposition “clearly intended to create chaos and to call into question the real results”.

Much of the deep opposition to Conde stems from his bid for a third term.

He pushed through a new constitution in March which he argued would modernise the country. But it also allowed him to bypass a two-term limit for presidents.

After decades as an opposition activist, Conde became Guinea’s first democratically elected president in 2010 and he won again in 2015.

Rights groups now accuse him of veering towards authoritarianism, however.

Diallo was formerly a prime minister under authoritarian leader Lansana Conte.

He unsuccessfully challenged Conde in both 2010 and 2015, in elections his party activists are convinced were rigged.

Second round

An acrimonious political campaign in the run-up to the vote saw Conde and Diallo trade insults, as well as violent incidents break out in some parts of the country.

The campaign also raised the spectre of ethnic strife, with Conde accused of exploiting divisions for electoral ends — a charge he denies.

Guinea’s politics are mainly drawn along ethnic lines: the president’s base is mostly from the ethnic Malinke community and Diallo’s from the Fulani people.

A second round of voting, if needed, is scheduled for November 24.

Source: AFP

Guineans cast ballots for a president on Sunday, with the 82-year-old incumbent Alpha Condé facing his longtime rival Cellou Dalein Diallo for a third time.

Guinea’s election — the first in a string across West Africa — followed a tense campaign marked by insults traded between President Alpha Condé and his leading rival. .

Some 5.4 million people were registered to vote, and initial results are expected to be announced in several days.

Ten other candidates besides Condé and Diallo were contesting the poll. A second round run-off vote is scheduled for November 24, if needed.

Polls closed at 6pm local time after a mostly calm day of voting, but there are already fears of post-election discord.

“Alpha Condé cannot abandon his desire to grant himself a presidency for life,” Diallo told reporters on Sunday, warning his rival not take power using “cunning and violence”.

Security Minister Albert Damantang Camara told AFP there had been “no major incidents” on Sunday, but that he was concerned about suggestions that Diallo would not accept the result.

He urged him to “return to his senses”.

‘We want peace, not a fight’

Mohamed Fode Camara, a social affairs ministry employee, said he “feared the day when results are announced”.

“God will save us, inshallah,” he said, adding that Guineans “want peace, not a fight”.

Much of the tension in Guinea relates to a new constitution Condé pushed through in March, in defiance of mass protests, arguing that it would modernise the country.

The move controversially allowed him to bypass a two-term limit for presidential terms.

After decades as an opposition activist, Condé became Guinea’s first democratically-elected president in 2010 and won again in 2015 but rights groups now accuse him of veering towards authoritarianism.

Wearing an off-white suit, the president cast his ballot in a school for the deaf and said he wanted a “free, democratic and transparent” election, with no violence.

Diallo, 68, was formerly a prime minister under authoritarian leader Lansana Conté.

He cast his vote, dressed in a white robe, in the Conakry suburb of Dixinn, an opposition stronghold. Earlier, he had urged his supporters to “show restraint”.

String of West Africa votes

Condé and Diallo have faced off twice before in tense polls in 2010 and 2015, but this year’s were especially fraught.

The old rivals traded bitter insults on the campaign trail. Diallo frequently raised the issue of Condé’s age and encouraged him to “retire with dignity”.

But the octogenarian president brushed off the jibes, and often reminded feverish crowds of Diallo’s tenure under the autocrat Conté.

Condé argues that he has modernised the nation of 13 million people, and this year adopted tactics from previous campaigns, telling voters he would make Guinea “Africa’s second (economic) power after Nigeria”.

But despite rich deposits of bauxite, gold and diamonds, and abundant fresh-water supplies, Guinea remains a poor country.

Sunday’s vote marks the start of a busy electoral cycle across West Africa, with votes also due in Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Niger.

Some of the major issues in these elections bear a striking semblance to the political debate in Guinea.

In Ivory Coast, for example, President Alassane Ouattara is running for a third term on October 31 after revising the constitution despite fierce opposition.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Campaigning begins in Ivory Coast Thursday for the October 31 presidential election, with incumbent Alassane Ouattara seeking a controversial third term while the opposition is pushing for civil disobedience amid violent demonstrations.

Many observers fear a pre- or post-election crisis comparable to that in 2010-2011 when 3,000 people died and the West African nation was plunged into chaos.

“All the Ivorian opposition says No, No, No,” to a third Ouattara mandate, was the message displayed at an opposition rally in Abidjan on Sunday that attracted tens of thousands of people.

There are four candidates in the running — 78-year-old Ouattara; the 86-year-old former president Henri Konan Bedie; and two outsiders — former prime minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan and former parliamentarian Kouadio Konan Bertin.

The constitutional council rejected a further 40 would-be candidates including former president Laurent Gbagbo, 75, and former rebel leader Guillaume Soro, 47, both of whom played key roles in the crisis that engulfed the country after disputed elections in 2010.

Gbagbo was freed conditionally by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague after being cleared in January 2019 of crimes against humanity.

He is currently in Brussels pending the outcome of an appeal against the ICC ruling.

The opposition has cried foul over Ouattara’s attempt to secure a third term in office despite the two-term constitutional limit.

After his re-election in 2015, Ouattara announced in March that he would not seek a third term.

But he changed his mind after his preferred successor, prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, died of a sudden heart attack in July.

Ouattara and his supporters have argued that a 2016 revision of the constitution reset the limit on the number of terms.

Violent demonstrations

Demonstrations against Ouattara’s decision to run again have turned violent and left around 15 people dead, reviving memories of the murderous crisis a decade ago.

Several high-profile figures, including Konan Bedie and former prime minister Affi N’Guessan, have called for “civil disobedience” in recent weeks.

During the campaign, Ouattara is expected to point to his “excellent” record on the economy and the positioning of Ivory Coast — the world’s biggest exporter of cocoa — as a regional powerhouse.

He is promising a better distribution of growth to the country’s poorest and most remote areas.

“This election will not be credible,” said former Foreign Minister Marcel Amon-Tanoh, a former Ouattara loyalist.

Turnout among the 7.5 million people entitled to vote in a country with a total population of 25 million will be a key point.

Observers fear a high abstention rate in a country with a median age of 18.7 for an election in which the two main contenders have been on the political scene for 30 years.

Last week, a delegation of African and UN envoys expressed “deep concern” ahead of the vote.

Last month, the International Crisis Group called for a postponement and suggested political exiles be allowed to return to Ivory Coast.

(AFP)

In an interview with FRANCE 24 in Niamey, Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou confirmed he does not plan to seek a third term in December’s presidential vote. “The elections will be free and transparent,” he vowed, insisting on the importance of having “strong democratic institutions”.

A few days after the release of four hostages in Mali, including French aid worker Sophie Pétronin, Issoufou reacted to the freeing of jihadists from Malian jails in exchange for the hostages. He insisted on the difficulty of such negotiations.

Asked about the attack that killed six French citizens and two Nigeriens at a giraffe reserve in Niger in August, he pledged to do everything possible to find the killers and bring them to justice. The president also promised more protection for humanitarian workers in his country.

Source: France 24

It was hoped the Sunday appointment of Mali’s new civilian prime minister, Moctar Ouane, could lift sanctions imposed by neighbouring countries.

ECOWAS imposed sanctions on Mali soon after the junta led August 18 coup and said they would be lifted after civilian leaders were appointed during the transition period.

But the bloc of West African leaders may take aim at junta leader Colonel Assimi Goita being appointed vice president.

He was one of the junta leaders who took power and toppled president Keita last month.

Former defence minister Bah Ndaw was sworn in as interim president on Friday and after announcing a new prime minister, he appearing to meet those conditions.

But Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari’s office said regional leaders “may confer again to discuss outstanding grey areas in the Mali political situation” after he met ECOWAS envoy and Nigerian ex-president Goodluck Jonathan.

The statement said Buhari told the envoy to present a formal report to the ECOWAS chairman, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo, “who will then write us officially, and we then determine the next steps”.

“According to the special envoy, the military leaders are yet to satisfy ECOWAS demand of a full civilian as vice president, and what his roles would be in government,” the statement said.

Source: AFP

Central African Republic president Touadera has announced on Saturday he will be running for a second term in office.

“It is a heavy duty, a very heavy one. I accept to be your candidate”, Touadera said in front of his party members in capital city Bangui.

If the President hadn’t officially announced he would be the Mouvement Coeurs Unis (MCU) party candidate, the news sure doesn’t come as a surprise for members of the presidential party.

Faustin Archange Touadéra now joins a dozen of candidates, amongst which former president François Bozizé, who have come back to the CAR after years in exile.

7 years after François Bozizé was overthrown by the mainly Muslim Seleka coalition, the Central African Republic is supposed to be hosting its presidential election on December 27th.

Since 2013, two thirds of the country has been controlled by rebel militias. Many fear that with the elections approaching, violence would once again surge in the African country.

Source: Africa News