In light of rising tensions over the upcoming October general elections, fake reports about a coup d’etat in the West African nation of Ivory Coast surfaced this week.
Several accounts on social media sites, including Facebook and X, posted videos of huge crowds on streets with burning buildings, which they claimed were from the country’s commercial capital, Abidjan.
Security forces and other government officials in the city this week did not report any violence, though. Residents of Abudjan also denied the allegations on social media.
On Thursday, the country’s National Agency for Information Systems Security of Ivory Coast (ANSSI) denied the rumours.
The organization stated in a statement that was made available on local media websites that: “Publications currently circulating on the X network claim that there has been an unfounded coup d’etat in Cote d’Ivoire [Ivory Coast]… It is the outcome of a carefully planned and coordinated disinformation campaign.
The rumours come just weeks after popular opposition politician Tidjane Thiam was barred from running for office after his eligibility was challenged in court over a technicality relating to his citizenship status. The ban is alleged to be political, and Thiam is appealing the decision.
The cocoa-producing nation of Ivory Coast has a long history of election violence, with one incident a decade ago launching an armed conflict that left countless people dead.
Fears that President Alassane Ouattara might run for a fourth term have added to the tensions this time. The president’s supporters argue that a constitutional amendment in 2016 reset the cap on his terms, allowing him to run for a third five-year term in 2020 despite the country’s two-term cap on presidents. Despite what experts claim is widespread dissatisfaction with the country’s political elite, he may face that same argument on the ballot in October.
Here’s what we know about the current political situation in the country:
What led to the rumor of a coup?
Videos showing hundreds of people demonstrating in the streets and setting fires to shops and malls started appearing on social media sites on Wednesday this week. Although French is the country’s official language, the majority of posts and blogs claiming to be from Abidjan and claiming to be in the middle of a coup d’etat were written in English.
Some posts also claimed that President Ouattara was missing and Lassina Doumbia, the country’s top military officer, had been killed. These claims were untrue and have been denied by the office of the president. The alleged violence was not reported by credible media outlets, including Ivorian state media and private news media.
How the rumors about President Ouattara missing came to light. On Thursday, he chaired a routine cabinet meeting in the capital. Additionally, he and Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe attended a ceremony honoring the illustrious former president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny.
Why are there political tensions in the country?
The country’s current political unrest is a result of the upcoming October 25 general elections.
Previous elections have been violent: Laurent Gbagbo, the president’s former leader, refused to hand over power to Ouattara, who was proclaimed the winner by the electoral commission during the general election in October 2010.
Tense political negotiations failed, and the situation eventually spiralled into armed civil war, with Ouattara’s forces, backed by French troops, besieging Gbagbo’s national army. Ouattara has close ties to Paris, and France was the former colonial power in Ivory Coast.
During the violence, there were about 3, 000 fatalities. Gbagbo’s capture on April 11, 2011, marked the end of the conflict. In 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) tried and found him guilty of war crimes.
Due to the recent painful history, which included Gbagbo, who has been barred from running in part because of previous convictions, it has become possible that the election results for this year could turn violent. In 2018, the former president was sentenced in absentia to a 20-year jail term over the looting of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) during the country’s post-election crisis.
Ouattara was nominated for a fourth term as president by the ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party in December. Ivorians, who many believe the president has outstayed his welcome, are concerned because Ouattara has so far refused to say whether he plans to run. Analysts see the party’s nomination as setting the stage for his eventual candidature, however.
In contrast to Ouattara, analysts claim that young military leaders who seized power in neighboring Mali and Burkinabe have a general sympathy for them.
What is Ouattara perceived as by the general public?
He has been praised for overseeing rapid economic stability in the last decade and a half, which has made the country the regional economic hub.
Ouattara is also credited with bringing some degree of political harmony to the nation. Gbagbo, who had been residing in Brussels since his 2021 ICC acquittal, was re-buffed by him in 2023. Since then, election campaigns have not been as inflamed as they were in the 2000s when Gbagbo played on ethnic sentiments to incite opposition to Ouattara, whose father was originally from Burkina Faso.
However, Ouattara’s critics accuse him of fighting against the constitution to hold onto power. In the most recent case involving Thiam, he is accused of coercing state institutions into punishing his political opponents.
His closeness with France, which is increasingly viewed as arrogant and neo-colonialistic, particularly by younger people across Francophone West Africa, has not won the president any favour from the country’s significant under-35 population.
Why has Tidjane Thiam been barred from the elections, and who is he?
Thiam, 62, is a prominent politician and businessman in Ivorian political circles. He is the first Ivorian to pass the entrance exam to France’s prestigious Polytechnique engineering school and is the nephew of the renowned Houphouet-Boigny. He left France and worked there until 1998, when a coup d’etat ended the civilian government and the army assumed command of the nation. He then returned to serve as a minister of planning and development until 1999.
Thiam declined a cabinet position offered by the military government and left the country. He then rose to prominence, holding positions in high regard, including those held by the world’s largest investment bank, Credit Suisse, and then as Prudential’s chief executive. After a colleague accused Thiam of spying on him, he resigned in 2020 as a result of a corporate espionage scandal at the bank. Thiam was cleared of any involvement.
After resuming politics in Ivorya in 2022, Thiam re-enters the Democratic Party (PDCI), the former ruling party that ruled from 1960 until the coup d’etat of 1999, and is now the main opposition party.
Following the passing of former head and ex-President Henri Konan Bedie, the party’s delegates overwhelmingly voted for Thiam to be its next leader in December 2023. At the time, PDCI officials said Thiam represented a breath of fresh air for the country’s politics, and many young people appeared ready to back him as the next president.
However, his ambitions were put on hold on April 22 when a judge decided to remove him from the list of contenders because Thiam had obtained Ivorian citizenship in 1987 and had already lost it, as required by the country’s laws.
The politician renounced his French nationality in February of this year, but the court determined otherwise because he had not done so before he had become eligible to run for president or even become a voter.
Thiam and his lawyers argued that the law is inconsistent. Thiam noted in an interview with reporters that the majority of the country’s national footballers are also French nationals, but they are not restricted from holding Ivorian nationality. In an interview with the BBC, Thiam claimed that the government was trying to thwart what he claimed was his party’s likely victory in this year’s elections. “The bottom line is, I was born Ivorian,” he said.
Will Thiam be able to stand and who else is standing?
Thiam is trying to get back on the candidate list, but it’s not clear whether he can do so.
He abruptly resigned as PDCI president in May, receiving a majority of the vote. He has yet to reveal if he will attempt to re-register as a candidate, but has promised to keep up the fight.
Thiam has pledged to spur industrial investment in the nation, as he once did as minister, and to end the country’s dependence on France’s CFA currency, which currently includes West and Central African nations that were once under French control.
Other notable candidates for the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) include former prime minister and close ally of Gbagbo Pascal Affi N’Guessan, 67.
Simone Gbagbo, the former first lady who is now divorced from Gbagbo, will also run, as the nominee for the Movement of the Capable Generations. She was given a 20-year prison term in 2015 for breaking the law to promote national harmony, but she also received benefits from an amnesty law later in 2018 to promote national harmony.
Source: Aljazeera
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