Ousted Leader Of Ivory Coast Flees to Togo

The ousted president of Ivory Coast left the country in a French aircraft today, landed in nearby Togo and may seek asylum in France, the government here said. Three days of rioting seemed to be coming to an end today as the army established control over the West African country, which until last week was considered one of the most stable, prosperous and democratic on the continent.

Residents of Abidjan, the main city, who were unable to finish their Christmas shopping when looting and car hijackings began on Thursday as soldiers held a protest, were back in stores, guarded by soldiers. There were military checkpoints on the thoroughfares, but buses, the main means of transportation for the city's three million people, began running again at dawn. Nonetheless, a nightly curfew and patrols by soldiers and police officers empowered to shoot anyone on the street after 6 p.m. will continue for the moment, security officials said. The country is being run by a nine-man junta calling itself the National Public Salvation Committee. The commanders of the police, the marines, the paratroops and armored and infantry units took oaths to it on television on Saturday night.

But the real power seems to be Gen. Robert Guei, 58, a former chief of the armed forces. He said today that he would create a government that would include civilians, but did not say when. On Saturday he invited political parties to discuss a unified government. France and the United States condemned the overthrow of President Henri Konan Bedie, 65, as did Nigeria and South Africa, the two most powerful countries in sub-Saharan Africa. A panel of foreign ministers from the Economic Community of West African States said it would meet soon to discuss the crisis. Ivory Coast is a member of the group, which has intervened in civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

This is the first coup in Ivory Coast, which is the world's largest producer of cocoa, and which exports palm oil, bananas and other tropical products. The country had a history of stable government. It was ruled by Felix Houphouet-Boigny from independence in 1960 until his death in 1993. Mr. Bedie, of Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's Democratic Party, succeeded him.

General Guei said today that mutineers had overthrown the government because it had been taking political prisoners and showing ethnic intolerance uncharacteristic of Ivorian traditions. But several forces seemed to be at work. General Guei, a French-trained career officer with a relatively low profile, was himself dismissed as armed forces chief by Mr. Bedie in 1995 after rumors of a coup were circulated. The general has said he was not involved in plotting a coup and was working on his farm when the mutineers asked him to be their spokesman.

The young soldiers who took part along with hooligans in the looting that began on Thursday complained about pay and working conditions. The government has recently been showing virulent nationalism and a xenophobic attitude toward migrant workers; a third of the 19 million population is from neighboring countries. More recently, the governing Democratic Party, dominated by members of Mr. Bedie's Baoule ethnic group, has tried to prevent Alassane Ouattara, an International Monetary Fund official who was Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's prime minister, from becoming a candidate in a presidential election next October. Mr. Bedie contended that Mr. Ouattara was a citizen of Burkina Faso and thus ineligible to run.

The government also jailed leaders of Mr. Ouattara's party, the Rally for the Republicans, who were freed by the mutineers. The new junta has some apparent links to Mr. Ouattara's party. Gen. Lassana Palenfo, another prominent member of the junta, was once Mr. Ouattara's security minister.

The junta expressed satisfaction with the departure of Mr. Bedie under what the French Foreign Ministry described as ''safe and dignified circumstances.'' Mr. Bedie spent two days hiding inside a French military base near the Abidjan airport under the protection of 550 French marines. Some cabinet ministers are being held by the junta, which said the detention was for their own protection. At least two appeared on television endorsing the coup, one of them surrounded by soldiers.

Mr. Bedie's wife and children were among the entourage of about 12 people allowed to leave with him. He was greeted at the airport in Lome, Togo's capital, by the Togolese president, Gnassingbe Eyadema. Asked by Agence France-Presse whether Mr. Bedie could end up in France, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry here replied that she did not know whether he wanted to come, but ''if he wishes to, he has the option of doing so.''

On Saturday, France reinforced its garrison with 40 troops from Gabon and positioned 300 more in Senegal to aid in any possible evacuation of the 20,000 or more French citizens in Ivory Coast. But General Guei refused permission for any more French troops to enter and guaranteed the safety of French citizens and property. He said an increase in troop strength could lead to a bloodbath, but also seemed to fear that France might try to restore Mr. Bedie to power.

Source: New York Times

Ivorian ex-premier to quit IMF for return to politics

Ivorian former prime minister Alassane Ouattara will return to political life in time for the presidential elections in the year 2000, Radio France Internationale reported. Ouattara served as prime minister from 1990 to 1993 under the late President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, but did not stand in the divisive 1995 presidential elections. He became deputy director of the International Monetary Fund, but announced in Abidjan on Sunday that he would leave the IMF in the second quarter of 1999, when his contract there ends. "I will return home to be at the disposal of my country, and also to contribute to its development.

This implies that, having held a political office, I cannot stay out of politics," he told reporters before returning to his job in Washington. The radio broadcast his remarks. He did not say whether he would run for president, but the radio said his return ought to reunite the Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party, which it said "is torn apart at present" .

The RDR was hit by the recent defection to the government of Adama Coulibaly, the party's erstwhile second-in-command, the radio said. The RDR considers Ouattara to be its tacit candidate for the 2000 poll, the radio said.

Source: BBC

Police, but Few Voters, in Ivory Coast Turnout

With tensions running high after opposition calls for a boycott, few turned out to vote today in the first presidential election since the death of the country's long-governing founding father, Felix Houphouet-Boigny.

In the days before the election, the interim President, Henri Konan Bedie, who took over after Mr. Houphouet-Boigny died in December 1993, sternly pledged to provide security throughout the country. He urged voters to defy his opponents by turning out in large numbers.

From daybreak, the streets of this city and many other Ivoirian towns were filled with security personnel armed with tear-gas grenades and dressed in riot gear. Adding to the tension was an announcement Saturday of Mr. Bedie's removal of the commander of the armed forces, Gen. Robert Guei. The general was reported to have resisted the President's orders that the military be deployed alongside the police in putting down demonstrations and maintaining order. This morning two protesters were reported to have been shot dead by security forces near the northern town of Korhogo. At least eight other people were killed in politically related violence leading up to the election.

But opposition supporters heeded the call of their leaders for an "active boycott" of the vote, while others, apparently considering the uncompetitive vote a mere formality, simply stayed at home. In Abidjan and in the interior, disgruntled citizens burned ballot boxes, ripped up voter lists or cut down trees to block roads to their towns in order to delay or prevent voting.

Mr. Bedie's main opposition rivals have charged that the Government rigged the voter lists and refused to allow independent supervision of the election process. On Saturday Mr. Bedie sought a settlement to ward off the election-day crisis. Opposition leaders said, however, that the President's offer amounted to what they called an unacceptable deal in which they would call off their boycott in exchange for revisions of voter lists in time for parliamentary and local elections starting next month. "From the moment they say they are willing to correct the lists, they are admitting there is a problem," said Abou Dramane Sangare, a senior leader of the Ivorian Popular Front, one of two main opposition parties that are boycotting the vote.

With Mr. Bedie's main rivals abstaining from the election, the only competition the 62-year-old leader faced was from Francis Wodie, a 59-year-old lawyer who heads the tiny, center-left Ivorian Workers Party and was not expected to win.

Earlier this year, an electoral code written by Mr. Bedie's supporters eliminated the man who was widely given the best chance of unseating the President, Alassane D. Ouattara, who served as Prime Minister under Mr. Houphouet-Boigny and is now deputy director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington. The other main opposition leader, Laurent Gbagbo, pulled out of the race in protest over other elements of the electoral code.

Source: New York Times

Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast's Leader Since Freedom in 1960, Is Dead

President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, Africa's oldest and longest-serving head of state and one of the last of a generation of African leaders to guide his people from colonalism, died yesterday. He was officially said to be 88 years old, but was widely believed to be much older.

His death was announced by Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara in a televised address 33 years to the day after the West African country gained its independence from France. Mr. Ouattara said the President had died at 6:35 A.M. Mr. Houphouet-Boigny recently underwent surgery for cancer of the prostate, but the cause of death was not immediately known.

The Speaker of Parliament, Henri Konan-Bedie, said that he had taken over, Reuters news service reported. The official television introduced Mr. Konan-Bedie as the new head of state as provided in the constitution. "The constitution confers on me in this tragic moment responsibilities of whose weight I am aware, the responsibilities of a head of state," Mr. Konan-Bedie, 59, said in a brief televised address. "I am assuming them from now."

Since becoming President of the Ivory Coast in 1960, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny (pronounced oof-WET bwahn-YEE) had presided over a tenfold increase in per capita income, to about $900 today, in what had been one of France's less developed African colonies. Of African countries south of the Sahara that do not export oil, the Ivory Coast has a per capita income second only to South Africa's. Agriculture Was Priority

A central element in the Ivory Coast's prosperity was Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's singular decision to give industrial development a low priority, believing it wiser to develop the nation's agricultural resources first, and only later concentrating on providing efficient ports, good roads, power and communications.

He also encouraged foreign investment with laws that imposed few restrictions on the transfer of profits and capital -- a policy that was scorned by his more nationalistic neighbors. The first 20 years or so after independence bore out his strategy well.

Coffee production increased significantly, catapulting the Ivory Coast into third place behind Brazil and Colombia in total production. By the early 1980's it became the world's leading cocoa producer. It also became Africa's leading exporter of pineapples and palm oil.

The Ivory Coast's rapid economic progress was often cited as a showcase for successful capitalist development in an African setting. And through a confluence of political acumen, eloquence and a calm and authoritative manner, this short, small-boned, almost delicate-appearing man, was able to avoid most of the fierce confrontation and political turmoil that have tormented post-independence Africa. Even his harshest critics, who called him a tool of neocolonialism, concede that he instilled a strong sense of nationhood among the country's nearly 60 distinct ethnic groups.

The stability that he built during his first two decades in office seriously began to erode in recent years. Much of the deterioration was caused by a dramatic slump in world commodity prices, which threw the economy into a tailspin. In recent months, for the first time in memory, some civil servants were not paid; and there was talk of huge future layouts.

Moreover, scores of Ghanaians were killed in the Ivory Coast last month after a soccer match in Ghana that Ghana won. That made many foreigners fearful for their safety.

In the wake of mounting street protests during the spring of 1990, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny reluctantly lifted the ban on opposition parties, opening the way for multiparty government. At the time, his principal political opponent, Laurent Gbagbo, a history professor, made an issue of the President's age, obliquely suggesting that he was not sufficiently fit for a seventh five-year term.

The President did little to deflect such criticism. In the waning days of the campaign, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was virtually invisible, relying mostly on old television footage of himself in his younger days to sway the electorate. The tactic appeared to work: he swept to victory in presidential polls in October that year. A Wealthy Planter's Son

Felix Houphouet-Boigny was born Oct. 18, 1905 -- or up to seven years earlier, according to some unofficial accounts -- in Yamoussoukro, a town 160 miles north of Abidjan, then the Ivory Coast capital. The son of a wealthy chief who owned large cocoa and coffee plantations, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny made his way through the French colonial education system to become a prosperous rural doctor and successful planter.

He turned to politics in the mid-1940's, a tense period in which nationalists in France's eight West African colonies were clamoring for change and self-determination. In 1944 he was a co-founder, with other disgruntled African planters, of the African Agricultural Syndicate, a group organized to protect its members' interests against inroads made by French settlers. He soon rose to prominence and within a year -- after converting the organization into the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast -- he was elected a deputy to the French National Assembly.

He immediately gained a reputation by securing abolition of the single most unpopular feature of colonial rule, a labor law that allowed French planters to conscript workers from any village in the country. That same year Mr. Houphouet-Boigny allied his party with a new regional movement called the African Democratic Rally. The movement, of which he was president, generally voted with the Communists in the French Assembly, because they had shown sympathy for African aspirations. 'A Bourgeois Landowner'

But after the Communists went into powerless opposition in the late 1940's, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny broke off the rally's ties with them. Explaining his reasons for having worked with the Communists, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny remarked: "I, a bourgeois landowner, I would preach the class struggle? That is why we aligned ourselves with the Communist Party, without joining it."

By this time, however, he had become much feared by the French as a dangerous African nationalist, and in 1950, after an outbreak of anti-colonial violence in his territory, he was ordered arrested. He managed to slip away minutes before the police arrived at his home and was never imprisoned, although many of his political allies were.

But once independence for the Ivory Coast was in sight, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny sought to continue close cooperation with Paris. He divided his time between Abidjan, of which he was mayor, and Paris, where he served in the National Assembly. By 1956 his relations with the French Government were cordial enough for Prime Minister Guy Mallet to appoint him a minister-delegate, the first African in a French Cabinet.

By that time Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's popularity and influence in the African territories, where anti-colonial sentiment was growing, had become formidable. One French magazine noted in 1956 that he "was the object of impassioned manifestations." His photograph, the magazine said, "was in all the huts, on the lapels of coats, on the corsages of African women and even on the handlebars of bicycles."

Returning to his homeland to head an independent Ivory Coast in 1960, he established uncontested personal control through a unique brand of paternalistic authoritarianism. As in many African countries, he sought to keep all dissent under the umbrella of a single party.

And he often subdued his opposition by largesse, giving his opponents patronage jobs instead of jail sentences. Several half-hearted coup attempts in the early 1960's were easily suppressed. All those arrested were eventually released. Later, he even made one of the plotters a minister. And until recently, the press, radio and television were tightly controlled.

He was so confident of his popularity and grip on the reins of power that virtually every year he took extended European vacations -- occasionally as long as six months.

Europeans, who became unwelcome in much of Africa after independence, were still eagerly welcomed in the Ivory Coast. In particular, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny continued close economic and cultural ties with France: the French population in the Ivory Coast grew from about 10,000 in 1960 to about 50,000 30 years later. And because of the important role he gave to French technical experts in Government, banking and business, some of Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's critics accused him, often from abroad, of being a neocolonialist. Overtures to South Africa

In international relations, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny, often went against the grain in Africa. In the late 1960's he supported the ultimately unsuccessful Biafran war of secession from Nigeria. He also sought, on occasion, a dialogue with South Africa. In 1973, however, he joined other African nations in breaking off relations with Israel, and the ties were not restored until 1985.

Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was subjected to worldwide criticism in 1979, when he granted asylum to Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the exiled leader of the Central African Republic. However, he subsequently found the presence of Mr. Bokassa, who had been accused of the massacre of hundreds of his countrymen, a continuing burden, both politically and financially, and in 1983 he ordered his expulsion.

The same year he realized a dream when Yamoussoukro, his birthplace and the seat of the traditional chieftaincy of the Baoule ethnic group was designated the Ivory Coast's new capital by the ruling party as "an expression of gratitude from the country to the father of a nation."

But soon afterward, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's popularity began to wane. His oft-repeated assertion that "not a single drop of blood has been spilled in this country since I've been President," was conclusively disproved in the late 1980's. Civil unrest increased after the sharp turn in the country's economic fortunes. Unemployment has become acute, especially in urban areas like Abidjan and violent crime has become increasingly common. Huge Cathedral in Birthplace

Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was also widely criticized at home and abroad for his decision to build a $200 million Roman Catholic basilica, Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, by some measures the world's largest Christian church. The air-conditioned edifice can accommodate 18,000 people inside and 300,000 more in a 7.4-acre esplanade outside. Yet, only about 15 per cent of the population is thought to be Catholic, with about another 20 per cent Muslim and the rest animist. The President insisted that the basilica was built on his own land and financed with his own money.

Until he was well into his late 80's, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny continued to make day-to-day decisions and visitors who met him said he was as lucid and relatively robust. But as his health began to fail, there were increasing complaints that he lacked the energy to carry the nation into a new era of growth. At the time of his death, he was the third-longest-serving leader in the world, after President Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leader, and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Mr. Houphouet-Boigny had four children by his first wife and a daughter by his second wife, Therese.

Source: New York Times

Ivory Coast's Ruling Party Wins a Huge Majority in Open Election

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

President of the Ivory Coast Rejects Democracy Demands

President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, breaking a five-year public silence in the face of fierce opposition to his 30-year rule, today rejected demands for multiparty democracy and said he would use force to keep order.

Mr. Houphouet-Boigny, who is at least 84 years old, said at his first news conference in five years, ''Faced with injustice and disorder, I shall not hesitate to choose injustice.''

He blamed Western companies for the unrest and said they were trying to destabilize the country by driving down prices of cocoa and coffee, the Ivory Coast's main exports.

Source: New York Times