In the Ivory Coast, Many Smell a New Rat

It's a familiar story: The tyrant dictator calls elections thinking they'll legitimize his rule. The people vote him out, so he tries to steal the result. And the masses rise up and toss him in the trash can of history. But then the Ivory Coast story starts to diverge a little from the Yugoslavian one. The capital of the West African nation, Abidjan, was seized by street violence again Thursday despite a popular victory on the streets the previous day, in which General Robert Gueï was forced to flee the country in the face of massive demonstrations just days after fraudulently proclaiming himself election victor. Now the protests are directed not against Gueï, but at his opponent, election victor Laurent Gbagbo. More than 50 people have died in clashes between demonstrators and troops since the election, and turmoil on the streets has shown no sign of abating. Following Gueï's hasty departure Wednesday, Gbagbo proclaimed himself president and the same military that had installed Gueï in power rushed to endorse him. But many Ivoirians, and the international community, smell a rat.

Unlike Yugoslavia, where the opposition had thrown its support behind a single candidate, two of the Ivory Coast's largest opposition parties had been banned from participating in the election, and their supporters had boycotted the poll. Opposition leaders say the turnout in Sunday's election was as low as 5 percent of the electorate. The popular opposition leader Alassane Ouattara is leading calls for a new poll. An attempt by former president Henri Konan Bédié to exclude Outtara from the last election had prompted General Gueï's coup, but the general had then held the reins himself rather than hand over to Outtara. The only way out the mess, according to the international community and Ivory Coast's French-speaking neighbors, is to hold new elections. But Gbagbo isn't having any of it. Once the most prosperous and stable state in West Africa, the Ivory Coast has been in an economic decline that has brought political turmoil. Its initial economic successes had attracted millions of immigrants from neighboring countries, but the downturn has spawned a wave of nationalism that underlies much of the current crisis. Outtara was kept out of the last elections on the grounds that his parents were not Ivoirian, and Gbagbo espouses the same Ivoirian nationalism as ousted President Konan Bédié. Even if the latest political impasse is resolved, the deeper currents that it reflects will haunt the Ivory Coast for some time to come.