President Felix Houphouet-Boigny's party won an overwhelming majority in Parliament in multiparty elections that ended 30 years of unchallenged one-party rule, the Government said today. Opposition politicians accused the governing party of intimidation and fraud in the voting on Sunday.
The Interior Ministry said the governing Democratic Party won 163 seats in the 175-member Parliament while the Popular Front, the main opposition party, won 9 of the 10 seats captured by opponents of the Government. The remaining two seats went to governing party members who ran as independents.
Two opposition leaders who are university professors were elected to Parliament: Laurent Gbagbo of the Popular Front and Francis Wodie, head of the Ivoirian Workers' Party and dean of Abidjan University's law faculty.
Mr. Wodie, a former president of the human rights organization Amnesty International, defeated two candidates from the governing party and an ally of Mr. Gbagbo to win the seat from the affluent suburb of Cocody, where President Houphouet-Boigny voted. Mr. Wodie said in an interview, "It is difficult to believe these results are correct, that the opposition is in such a minority." He blamed a low voter turnout, which he estimated at 50 to 60 percent, and suggested that some Ivoirians had not bothered to vote because they believed that the balloting would be rigged.
About 4.4 million people registered to vote in the contest among 490 candidates from 19 parties. Results are not official until the Supreme Court ratifies them later this week. The Democratic Party had been expected to win, but not with such a vast majority. Its victory reinforced Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's re-election last month in the first contested presidential race in this West African nation's 30 years of independence, all under his rule.
The President's sole challenger, Mr. Gbagbo, has charged that the governing party also rigged that election, in which the octogenarian President won 81.67 percent of the vote.
Source: New York Times
