ALAN RAYBOULD, Abidjan | Monday
SUPPORTERS of Socialist Laurent Gbagbo are increasingly confident that he has won Ivory Coast’s presidential election, seeing off army ruler General Robert Guei to end 10 months of military rule.
Gbagbo, of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), and Guei were the only serious runners in a field of five after two other big parties saw their candidates barred by the Supreme Court.
”The first results that we are getting in are very good for us, we’re very confident,” said Gbagbo’s campaign manager, Affi N’Guessan, also the current industry and tourism minister.
Witnesses at counts in Abidjan said Gbagbo was well ahead – but in the past, results in the commercial capital have been no real guide as to what might have happened elsewhere.
Guei has said he would step down if he lost fairly but some observers wondered whether the army, after its taste of power, would be prepared to take a back seat.
Gbagbo had presented the election as a straight choice between a civilian and a general.
”It’s difficult to imagine that the Ivorians are going to vote in a soldier who carried out a coup d’etat,” he told reporters in Abidjan.
Guei had done little campaigning and had no real network of supporters on the ground to get voters out, apart from some officials of the former ruling Democratic Party (PDCI) and certain traditional chiefs who still hold some sway.
In contrast, Gbagbo was able to draw on years of building support around the country for multi-party elections and then, when that bore fruit, establishing himself as the leading opposition figure to the Democratic Party from 1990 elections.
Gbagbo, 55, was convinced that only fraud could deprive him of the presidency and he warned he would not stand for that.
”If there’s massive fraud, we’ll appeal to the people. It will be like Belgrade,” he said, referring to the popular outcry that forced Serbia’s President Slobodan Milosevic from power. – Reuters