James Astill Directly inspired by the popular uprising that felled Serbia’s strongman, street protests in Cte d’Ivoire swept out the West African state’s first and only military dictator this week, after less than a year in power. General Robert Gue is in hiding after trying – like Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade – to declare himself the winner of an election. The apparent victor of Sunday’s poll was a civilian and socialist, Laurent Gbagbo. When the general’s aim became clear on Tuesday, Gbagbo called for a Belgrade-style revolt against the ruling junta. His supporters defied an emergency curfew to take to the streets of the capital, Abidjan, and soldiers mutinied to join them. At least 13 died in the resulting clashes. As the last bursts of gunfire rang out in Abidjan on Wednedsay, Gbagbo praised supporters of his Ivorian Popular Front for repelling Gue’s “electoral coup d’tat. “I thank you for responding massively to this appeal. You went out in the hundreds of thousands. I pay particular homage to those who died in the cause of this. We will give them a funeral befitting their courage,” he said.
He also called for national conciliation – and he will need it if he is to stay in power. Two bigger parties, whose leaders were banned by the supreme court from contesting the election, are demanding a new poll in which all are free to run. It was a power struggle between these two parties – the perennial party of government, the Parti Dmocratique de Cte d’Ivoire, and its rival, the Rassemblement des Rpublicains – that gave Gue his coup opening in December. But if this scenario is about to repeat itself and the army is tempted to step in again, the general’s fate may act as a deterrent. Abandoned by his soldiers and denounced by senior colleagues scrambling to distance themselves from the junta in which they took part, he was thought by some to have fled to nearby Benin. But the chief of Cte d’Ivoire’s defence staff, Diabakate Soumahila, told Radio France International that Gue was still in Abidjan. It was on Monday afternoon that the only independent tally of voting in the election was given by the election commission. It showed Gbagbo with a slight edge over Gue after a fraction of the votes had been counted. On Tuesday, as tension grew over the lack of final results, the junta announced that the commission had been dissolved. An Interior Ministry official gave the final tally as 52,72% of the vote for Gue, and 41,02% for Gbagbo. Three lesser-known candidates shared the rest. But Gbagbo said he believed he had got 59,58%, compared to 32,91% for Gue. Later on Tuesday, the general went on state television to thank the people of Cte d’Ivoire who, he said, “like one man, in a great wave of dignity and solidarity, have just taken me to the head of the country”.