Demonstrators call for resignation of head of ruling military council

More than 1,500 demonstrators marched through the streets of Abidjan’s administrative district, Le Plateau, to demand the resignation of the head of the military Conseil National de Salut Publique (CNSP), which has been running Cote d’Ivoire since the ouster of President Henri Konan Bedie on 24 December 1999.

The demonstration, which was provided with a police escort, was peaceful. Placard-bearing protesters were preceded by a line of people who swept the street to symbolize the promise Guei made when the CNSP came to power – that he would sweep the house (i.e. the nation) clean before handing it back to an elected government. Students among the demonstrators told IRIN other protests would follow if the military leader refused to heed the demand.

“This situation takes us ten years back,” a local journalist told IRIN, in a reference to the protests at the start of the 1990s by advocates of multiparty democracy that lead to the end of the one-party state in Cote d’Ivoire.

The Forum des Jeunes - the coalition of youth groups, non-governmental organizations, trade unions and youth wings of political parties that organized the protest – also called for the creation of an independent national electoral commission (CENI - French acronym) and for free and fair elections. It said the presidential polls, to be held on 17 September, should be open to all declared candidates.

Two of the country’s three main political parties have so far chosen their presidential hopefuls. The choice for the Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI) is Laurent Gbagbo, while the candidate of the Rassemblement des Republicains (RDR) is former Prime Minister Alassane Dramane Ouattara. However, provisions in the country’s new constitution, which bars from the presidency anyone with non-Ivorian parents or who has had another nationality, would appear to exclude the RDR leader.

Overseas-based chapters of the Parti Democratique de Cote d’Ivoire (PDCI) have endorsed Bedie as their candidate but the CNSP has not authorized his return home from self-imposed exile in France. PDCI officials said last week that Guei had applied to be the party’s candidate but one of the CNSP leader’s advisers later denied this. Guei himself said he was not the candidate of any party. His party, he said, was Cote d’Ivoire.

Ouattara said on Monday that Guei should resign from the CNSP if he wanted to be a candidate. However, the CNSP leader dismissed this, pointing out that no incumbent president ever steps down when elections are to be held.

The Forum repeated Ouattara’s call on Thursday. It said: “If it can be admitted that a senior officer can have presidential ambitions, on the other hand it seems inconceivable to us for him to want, through his position at the head of the state apparatus, to distort the democratic system. Just as it is inadmissible for someone to be judge and party, we cannot accept General Guei being candidate and remain president of the CNSP.”

“The candidature of the head of the military junta can only be a big danger for the democratic revolution,” it said.