Alassane Ouattara is due to be sworn in on Saturday as the president of long-troubled Côte d’Ivoire, which he hopes to reunite after a bloody crisis when his predecessor refused to step down.
The investiture ceremony will take place at 10.30am GMT in the political capital, Yamoussoukro, the village that is the birthplace of the “father of the nation”, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who died in 1993 after 33 years in power. Ouattara was his prime minister from 1990 to 1993.
According to the organising committee, 23 heads of state are expected in Yamoussoukro, led by the president of former colonial power France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who will make a brief return trip, like United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
African leaders invited include Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, the acting president of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), Blaise Compaore of neighbouring Burkina Faso, who has been a mediator in the Ivorian crisis, Ali Bongo of Gabon, and the chairperson of the commission of the African Union, Jean Ping.
Ouattara (69) will be made head of state almost six months after the presidential election of November 28 2010, when he took on Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to admit defeat at the polls after 10 years in power. Gbagbo’s stubbornness plunged an already divided country into a serious conflict that claimed almost 3 000 lives.
The new president took power after the arrest on April 11 of Gbagbo, after two weeks of fighting between troops who remained loyal to the former head of state and Ouattara’s forces, who were backed by UN troops from a force deployed in the West African country and by French troops permanently based there.
‘Blessing of the Ivorian people’
Officially proclaimed president on May 5 by the head of the Constitutional Council, Yao N’Dre, Ouattara took the oath of office the next day.
Yao N’Dre, who is close to Gbagbo, was the man who on December 3 proclaimed the outgoing president re-elected with 51,45% of the votes, undermining results announced by the electoral commission, which gave Ouattara 54,1%. The UN and several countries including the United States and France backed Ouattara’s claim to the presidency.
The investiture “will mark a starting point for a new Côte d’Ivoire, a great rally of all Ivorians. Mr Ouattara will receive the blessing of all the Ivorian people and show the rest of the world that he has been elected head of the whole country,” Anne Ouloto, a spokesperson for the new leader, said.
Since April 11, Côte d’Ivoire has slowly been pulling itself out of political and economic crisis. Civil servants have gone back to work, schools have opened again, the forces of law and order are going about their tasks, and businesses have resumed activity. But the country remains scarred by violence and looting in the past few months.
While the new president has promised reconciliation, notably by setting up an ad hoc commission to tackle the issues, he has also pledged to bring to trial those responsible for crimes committed since November 28, whoever they were.
Gbagbo, his wife Simone and many members of the former regime, have been arrested and consigned to house arrest in different towns of the country, in line with an inquiry being carried out by Ivorian prosecutors.
With regard to the most serious crimes, Ouattara has asked the office of the prosecutor in the International Criminal Court to probe and make sure “that the people holding the heaviest penal responsibility for these crimes be identified, pursued and brought to justice before the International Criminal Court”. — Sapa-AFP