Ivory Coast succession issue puts alliance at risk
THE RULING alliance that steered the Ivory Coast to become sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest-growing economy is at risk of falling apart as the main partners are bitterly divided over who will succeed President Alassane Ouattara when he steps down in 2020.
Top officials of the Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace, a coalition known by its acronym RHDP, are jockeying for positions as each party claims the right to appoint a preferred presidential candidate. After six years of relative stability, succession politicking may grow increasingly disruptive.
Presidential elections in Ivory Coast have often fuelled tension since the death of the first post-independence ruler, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, in 1993, and two out of four votes have turned violent.
In 2010, ex-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to acknowledge he’d lost the election to Ouattara, who won the final round because of the backing of the former ruling Democratic Party of Ivory Coast, or PDCI, and its leader Henri Konan Bedie. Gbagbo’s refusal triggered six months of fighting that led to more than 3 000 deaths.
Together, Bedie and Ouattara, who heads the Rally of the Republicans, or RDR, command a comfortable majority of voters in a country where ethnic and regional loyalties dominate politics.
While Ouattara is popular among northerners, Bedie has his traditional power base in the eastern cocoa-growing regions. Cracks in the coalition, which has been credited with restoring peace and overseeing record economic growth, already began to appear in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary vote.
More than 700 candidates chose to run on independent tickets, including several who had been purged from the RHDP.
“The 2020 presidential vote is on everybody’s mind, and everybody wants to take a chance,” said Ousmane Zina, a political analyst in Bouake. “It’s very likely that the coalition will implode before the election.”
Growth averaged more than 9% since 2012, twice as fast as the average in sub-Saharan Africa.