Ivory Coast Explained-Fraud in Elections Via Ouattara

Here is also some commentary from Creeping Sharia on those many killed in the Ivory Coast:

Take note, Obama and the Ummah United Nations are behind Ouattara even though the winner of the election is in dispute. When it’s time to choose his poison, Obama always sides with the Muslim.

Update: Ivory Coast in chaos as ‘over 1,000 massacred’

Patrick Nicholson, of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas, said workers visited Duekoue last Wednesday and found hundreds of bodies of civilians killed by bullets from small-arms fire and hacked to death with machetes. He said they estimated that more than 1,000 civilians had been killed.

Nicholson, the Caritas spokesman, said the killings occurred over three days in a neighbourhood controlled by fighters loyal to internationally recognised president Alassane Ouattara, though it was not clear who the perpetrators were.

[This is]…the second source claiming no clue on who killed 1,000 people even though fighters loyal to the Muslim leader captured the town.

To catch the reader up on the issues in that part of Africa, one article explains why we find this tension growing:

Background

A civil war began on September 19, 2002 due to several unresolved social, political, and military issues the government of the Ivory Coast had not proactively dealt with. One of the largest of these issues remains the increasingly grim “ethnic problem” that has led to violence around attempted pre-election periods. It is estimated that over 20% of the national population is of foreign descent, which has led to a national disunity concerning voting rights. The underlying problem of the voting rights issue is the indecision surrounding if foreigners, many from Burkina Faso, have the right to vote.

During the 30-year reign of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, ethnic tensions had been suppressed under the strong leadership of the government despite a growing influx of foreigners from other African nations. After Houphouët-Boigny, the nation struggled to integrate democracy into the fragmenting society largely due to a growing dislike of the “non-Ivoirity” population. Over the past several years, this term has been used as increasingly racist and is often used in the rampant nationalist, xenophobic politics to represent the population of the southeastern portion of the country, particularly in the capital of Abidjan.

As last century drew to a close, ethnic violence began to increase as the economy of the Ivory Coast continued to sink, forcing many urban workers to return to the growing fields that had originally made Ivory Coast a regional powerhouse. However, many of the farmers were immigrants from other African nations who had been drawn to the wealth of the Ivory Coast. This further exacerbated heightening tensions between ethnic groups, leading to frequent riots on plantation farms.

The final straw came before the 2000 elections, which required that both parents of any presidential candidate be born within sovereign territory of the Ivory Coast. This excluded northern presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara, a serious contender for the presidency from the race, who represented much of the immigrant community.

On September 19, 2002, northern troops mutinied and launched multiple attacks across Abidjan. By that night, much of the north was under their control despite a failure to take over Abidjan. French troops soon moved in to separate the two sides and evacuate expatriates. Despite a ceasefire soon afterwords, additional rebel groups appeared in the west of the country and fears of a nationwide security meltdown led to UN troops being deployed throughout the country. Sporadic violence has kept the Ivory Coast in a state of tension into 2010.

Currently, the international community is enforcing an arms and diamond embargo on the Ivory Coast, as well as freezing the assets of anyone standing in the way of peace.

Current Crisis Due to Multiple Unresolved National Issues

The failure of the shaky coalition government to deal with security issues, voting rights, and demobilization of the rebel group New Forces has created an environment that is not safe for free and fair elections to take place.

According to a judicial official, last week Ivory Coast investigators discovered evidence of “fraud” in a voters’ roll, triggering additional protests in the western town of Man, where the local court was ransacked by hundreds of angry civilians. The Independent Electoral Commission denied the allegations despite previous acknowledgements of major problems in providing fair elections. [see video near bottom]

According to news agency Reuters, on February 9, 2010:

“Rioters in western Ivory Coast burned down a local government building on Tuesday during a demonstration against the government’s handling of voter registration in a much delayed election. Witnesses said more than a thousand demonstrators marched through the city of Vavoua as local security forces tried unsuccessfully to disperse them by firing shots in the air…

Political tensions are rising as West Africa’s former economic giant looks set to miss another deadline for holding presidential elections needed to end years of political crisis…

President Laurent Gbagbo is locked in a row with electoral commissioner Robert Mambe, whom he accuses of trying to add around 430,000 names to the final voter list that were not properly vetted to check their Ivorian nationality.”

As violence and riots continue to mount, the spokesman for the ex-rebel group New Forces Sidiki Konate stated that the Ivory Coast is at a renewed risk for civil war:

“We have today in places a real danger to the peaceful coexistence of our communities. The communities are looking daggers at each other, ready to attack. The seeds of civil war are there, each one is already preparing its munitions.”

Such rhetoric, along with the ever-growing ethnic, political, and social issues such as:

  • a government failure to deal with security issues
  • voting rights
  • demobilization of the New Forces

raises sincere concerns that not only will a national election be delayed yet again, but also that this time civil war could be resumed by it.


Election 2010 en Cote d’ivoire; la fraude… by blueteamci

Libertarian Republican has this update to how our Secretary of State is dealing with it (remember what Creeping Sharia said: Take note, Obama and the Ummah United Nations are behind Ouattara even though the winner of the election is in dispute. When it’s time to choose his poison, Obama always sides with the Muslim.):

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, quoted this morning by Fox News:

President Laurent Gbagbo to step down immediately,” she said. “His continuing refusal to cede power to the rightful winner of the November 2010 elections, Alassane Ouattara, has led to open violence in the streets, chaos in Abidjan and throughout the country… Gbagbo is pushing Cote d’Ivoire into lawlessness. The path forward is clear. He must leave now so the conflict may end.

One commenter humorously noted below the LR post that, “Now, FINALLY, Muslims will like us. Right?” One need only to read the headlines to know that Islam hate most of humanity. LR also has a story about Muslim Aligned Kenyan President wanting Gbagbo to step down. Here are some background posts to that one from LR:

  • LR arcticle 2009 “New video surfaces Obama campaigning in Kenya for Raila Odinga”;
  • LR article 2009 “More violence in Kenya: Muslim sect hacks to death 25 Chritian Villagers”;
  • LR article 2008 “Obama’s ties to Radical Islam in his native Kenya”;
  • LR article 2008 “Obama’s relative Raila Odinga linked to Ethnic cleansing in Kenya.”