Is Stalling Coming to an End in Côte d’Ivoire?

Yesterday President Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire and representatives of opposition factions signed an agreement to hold presidential elections in late February or early March next year. My initial reaction was skeptical. Gbagbo’s term ended in 2005, and a hot and cold civil war from 2002 on has complicated the holding of elections, although the past few years have been relatively peaceful. Presidential polls have been agreed upon several times before, for October 2005, October 2006, July 2007, October 2007, January 2008, June 2008, November 2008, December 2009, and now “finally” February/ March 2010. With this track record, the likelihood that there will actually be an election in March is pretty slim.

But the pushed back elections over the years have not been a purely meritless delaying tactic, and the cause of contention is very gradually being resolved. The main problem, contested by both sides of the argument, has been voter lists and eligibility. Who is considered “Ivoirian” is a touchy subject in a country with deep ethnic divides and an immigration problem. Côte d’Ivoire traditionally has a successful cocoa crop economy that attracts workers from its poorer regional neighbors, and the rebels do not want to see these outsiders vote. Yet where to draw the line is problematic, since many immigrant families have actually lived in Côte d’Ivoire for several generations and are fully integrated into Ivoirian society.

It seems like this problem is close to being resolved, with a provisional voter list approved in September. The most recent suspension is due to alleged irregularities in this list and thus delays in producing a final voter register. It is currently unclear just how problematic the current list is, although the optimistic scheduling for February or March means that it is possible the differences are not insurmountable in the short term. On the other hand, scheduling elections certainly has not signaled much of anything concrete in the past.

Bottom line: don’t expect elections in early 2010. But unless the rebel Forces Nouvelles (or Gbagbo) really had no intention of a transition to begin with, find a new issue to quibble over, and return to fighting, it is possible we might see a new president elected in early 2011.