The Ivory Coast's tense election stand-off spells political disaster for the economic dynamo of West Africa, concludes Gamal Nkrumah Building on a prosperous past gives hope for a more accommodating and forgiving future. Although when the bounty is built on the backs of cheap immigrant labour who have earned the right to Ivorian citizenship, it comes with a price tag. The cultural driving force of the Ivory Coast, or Côte d'Ivoire as some prefer to refer to the West African nation of 22 million people, has been its ethnic and religious diversity. Christianity is breathing new life into the southern coastal regions of the country. Islam, in sharp contrast, has long held sway in the northern reaches of the sprawling, resource-rich country. Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo takes a different trajectory from most of his predecessors. The founding father of the Ivory Coast, the later president Felix Houphouet Boigney was a symbol of national unity. He was neither seen as Christian nor Muslim, southerner nor northerner. It really didn't matter what he believed in so far as the religious realm was concerned. He spoke of divining the future of his nascent nation and the entire process of nation building as one in which indigenous forms of capitalism were encouraged. He invited foreign investors, too. And, France's role as the premier economic partner in the Ivory Coast's development became paramount. Other Western nations, too, entered the fray. The Ivory Coast metamorphosed from a remote backwater to the very paradigm of the global village in West Africa. Capitalism never became canonised in any particular Ivorian version, but the country's leaders saw to it that Africans prospered from the export of tropical raw materials and exotic agricultural produce. Africans from less fortunate neighbouring nations began to feel that Ivorian prosperity had a decidedly regional geographical reference. Leader of the opposition Rally of the Democratic Republicans (RDR) Alassane Ouattara was declared winner by the Independent Electoral Commission of the Ivory Coast. Ouattara came to embody this regional dimension of Ivorian economic prosperity. He was handpicked by the late president Houphouet-Boigny as chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for Coordination of the Stabilisation and Economic Recovery of the Ivory Coast. The point is that the founding father of the nation had no reservations about appointing a Muslim and a northerner to the highest positions in the multi-ethnic land. Ouattara apparently garnered 54.1 per cent of the vote with Gbagbo clinching 45.9 per cent. Gbagbo's tenure in office expired in 2005, but he hung on tenaciously to power hoping to deny a Muslim northerner the opportunity of ruling the Ivory Coast a country with a Muslim majority of over 60 per cent of the population. "I call once again on my brother Laurant Gbagbo to respect the people's choice," Ouattara pleaded with Gbagbo. In the central Ivorian city of Bouake, the country's second largest, supporters of Ouattara vowed to die for his cause. In Gbagbo's bastion of Abidjan, backing for Ouattara was far more muted. Still, the Ivorian military and police, especially in predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods enforced a curfew for fear of confessional conflict. Ouattara, former prime minister of the Ivory Coast and an ex-World Bank top official, has the full support of the United States, the European Union, including France the former colonial master of the Ivory Coast, the United Nations and the African Union. Ouattara was also an economist of longstanding preeminence with the International Monetary Fund and rose to become director of the African Department at the IMF. The independent National Electoral Commission Constitutional Council declared Ouattara the clear winner. Gbagbo and Ouattara were respectively sworn in at separate ceremonies on Saturday, much to the consternation of the international community and the African Union. The political stability of the Ivory Coast is pivotal to the prosperity of the West Africa. It is the economic powerhouse of the region and a major energy producer, supplying much of the oil and natural gas of West Africa. Ouattara, confident of the support of the international community and regional and African continental leaders, is sticking to his guns. "The UN has certified the results from the Electoral Commission of the Ivory Coast. I am the president of the Ivory Coast," declared the former Ivorian prime minister. Gbagbo is supported by the Ivorian army and the National Assembly, and most of the electorate in the southern half of the country, including the economic capital and largest port-city of Abidjan. "We have come to greet the president of the republic [Gbagbo]. We are here to express our admiration and to reiterate our availability and our loyalty and to tell him [Gbagbo] that we are ready to take on any mission that he will entrust us with," declared Commander-in-Chief of the Ivorian Armed Forces General Philippe Mangou. In sharp contrast, the youthful leader of the northern-based former rebel New Forces Guillaume Soro, appointed prime minister by Gbagbo, promptly tendered his resignation. The Constitutional Court of the Ivory Coast is now technically in control of the explosive situation. It is believed to be largely loyal to Gbagbo, since most of the judiciary in the country fear infiltration by northern Muslims eager to introduce elements of Islamic Sharia law are loathe to see Ouattara win. The Constitutional Court, most observers assume, has the final say. Gbagbo hails from the southwestern part of the country and is generally believed to have the backing of a majority of southerners most of whom are Christians. The northerners, predominantly Muslim, are staunch supporters of Ouattara, himself a devout Muslim. All this leaves Gbagbo more vulnerable. Having used all the tricks in the book, he is now increasingly dependent on the army. The neighbouring countries have barely concealed their exasperation with Gbagbo and they have all made it clear that they are partial to Ouattara. An emergency meeting of the 16-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) took place in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Tuesday to discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Ivory Coast. African leaders have openly noted that the official outcome declared by Gbagbo diehards does not reflect reality. The problem, however, is that because Gbagbo has his stronghold in Abidjan, there is no real protection against social unrest and the eruption of the civil war that ravaged the country in 2002 when northerners rebelled against the southern controlled central government. The 9,000 peacekeepers from ECOWAS and the UN (the bulk are French gendarmes), precariously stationed between hostile north and south regions, have kept a tentative peace. The country is effectively split into two administrative parts, with southerners claiming that many northerners like Ouattara do not qualify for Ivorian citizenship. The army has no control whatsoever of the northern half. The waterfronts of the commercial capital Abidjan greatly benefited from the prosperity of the country in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when the Ivory Coast outstripped Ghana as the world's largest cocoa producer. The Ivory Coast also emerged as the world's most significant producer of robusta coffee. It is a major rubber producer, tea exporter and its tropical soils furnish the world with some of the most important exotic equatorial produce. Millions of Africans from the impoverished countries to the immediate north of the Ivory Coast flocked to the country in search of gainful employment in the coffee and cocoa plantations. Most were Muslims from Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Niger. Nobody gave a toss as to their religion as long as they toiled the land for peanuts. They left their mark on the cultural development of the country. Nevertheless, successive governments did not comprehensively cover the cultural manifestations of the influx of Muslim immigrants from neighbouring West African countries until the Muslims became an overwhelming majority and the seeds of civil war were sown. Labels have been attached to the ethnic, linguistic and religious divide in the Ivory Coast. The dominant Christian culture in the south of the country has been hijacked by Western imperialism, especially France and the United States, where the idea of Westernised legacy passed passively down the generations. The Muslims of the north were projecting powerful cultural forms, initially largely invisible yet increasingly incendiary. Ironically, Ouattara emerged as the favourite by both his people and by the international benefactors and chief trading partners of Ivory Coast. "I call on the military and civilian authorities to respect the people's choice and refrain from any initiative that could cause violence," French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the Ivorian powers that be. The EU Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barroso concurred. He declared Ouattara to be the "legitimate winner". Western leaders suddenly found it more convenient to back their mild- mannered Muslim protégé. "We are all interested in what is happening in the Ivory Coast and our major concern is for peace to prevail so that the lives of the people are not adversely affected," the AU chief mediator and envoy to Ivory Coast former South African president Thabo Mbeki told reporters in Abidjan. The Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producer and the turmoil affecting cocoa production not surprisingly caused cocoa prices to soar by six per cent over the weekend in London and New York although according to Britain's Financial Times, "the market later pared gains." A question, though, that has been largely ignored by the international media is the economic platforms of either Gbagbo or Ouattara. What is Ouattara's vision for the Ivory Coast? The question that the West African and international commodity markets will keep asking is this: Who is more able to guarantee the economic stability and prosperity of the Ivory Coast -- the xenophobic Gbagbo or the suave economic wizard Ouattara? Few observers have forgotten that Ouattara has strong international links to the Bretton Woods institutions. President of the UN Security Council and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice expressed a keen interest in the outcome: Ouattara's confirmation as president is "a crucial step for ensuring the validity and integrity of the electoral process". Above all, Ouattara has played a difficult hand well since he left the employ of the IMF and World Bank. Whoever finally snatches the victor's laurel, at a time of acute political tensions in the Ivory Coast, Ivorian public finances and the shaky economic conditions will be the country's and its future president's Achilles heel.
