NICHOLAS PHYTHIAN, Abidjan| Friday
PRESIDENT Laurent Gbagbo has taken office preaching reconciliation in Ivory Coast, hours after its people’s power revolt degenerated into bloody ethnic feuding, but he rejected calls from around the world for a new election.
Gbagbo also ruled out any rewriting of a constitution which excluded Muslim former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara from the presidential race.
The former ruling Democratic Party (PDCI-RDA), the country’s oldest and largest, meanwhile, pledged to work with Gbagbo and told its supporters to be ready to contest a parliamentary election planned for December 10.
Gbagbo’s comments followed a three-day roller coaster in which people’s power protests toppled military ruler General Robert Guei this week, before turning sour the morning after.
Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer, was once a haven of stability in a troubled continent, but this week’s violence killed at least 85 people.
”This country is no longer itself,” Gbagbo said, speaking after ethnic and political rivals hacked and hit each other with machetes and clubs, and attacked churches or mosques.
”The Ivory Coast that I take over today is nothing like the Ivory Coast that I knew when I was a child. Fights, violence, deaths – all for nothing,” he said.
Security officials extended an overnight curfew and a state of emergency, and threatened to open fire on curfew breakers.
Guei, whose whereabouts are unknown, called Sunday’s election to choose a civilian president to conclude the transition to constitutional legality following Ivory Coast’s first coup last December 24.
The supreme court excluded Ouattara, a former International Monetary Fund deputy managing director, plus all the would-be candidates of the Democratic Party from Sunday’s election, citing conditions in the new constitution.
Ouattara supporters, who had kept a low profile under Guei, took to the streets on Thursday demanding a fresh election.
Countries from around the world backed Ouattara’s call for a new poll on the grounds that Sunday’s denied over two thirds of the country’s voters a candidate of their choice.
The United States, South Africa and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan all supported the idea. Former colonial power France said Gbagbo’s inauguration was the priority followed by the parliamentary elections. – Reuters