Heavy security for Ivory Coast election

IVORY Coast voted yesterday in elections that President Alassane Ouattara hopes will strengthen his parliamentary majority to help keep the world’s top cocoa producer in the economic fast lane.

The week-long election campaign was peaceful, but the authorities ordered 30 000 security forces into the streets yesterday in the wake of scattered incidents in recent months, including attacks on police posts.

“Give me a strong majority to enable me to speed up the work that I have set as an objective in the four years to come,” Ouattara said in a TV broadcast, playing up his economic achievements to win support among the 6.2 million eligible voters.

The country was long the star economic performer in the region until hitting a decade of political strife but is now back on the rails.

The International Monetary Fund has said the west African state will be the continent’s fastest-growing economy this year.

The presidential coalition – named the Houphouetist Rally for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) in tribute to the country’s founding president – aims to take an absolute majority in a National Assembly comprising 255 members of parliament.

No fewer than 1 337 candidates are standing in the single-round poll.

Most observers, and even some in the opposition, acknowledge the economic benefits of Ouattara’s rule, but find his political record less convincing.

National reconciliation after a decade of strife and violence at the last legislative polls in 2011 remains unfinished, the judiciary is under fire and the opposition shunned a constitutional referendum in October.