Telephone polls – a light-hearted alternative to the real thing

“Vote for your candidate in complete anonymity,” the advert says, “Call right now!”. Presidential elections will not take place as scheduled on 30 October but Ivorians can pick up the telephone and declare their choice instead. The privately operated telephone poll is all about easing the atmosphere of mistrust that has gripped the political process in Cote d’Ivoire, according to the scheme’s mastermind, Hamed N’Cho. “I wanted to show that you can organise elections in a relaxed and playful atmosphere and that you can vote without getting into an argument or a fight,” he told IRIN. The warring parties in Cote d’Ivoire have plodded through three years of missed deadlines – steps that were to have led to presidential elections at the end of this month. The polls have been shelved for what could be a full year, over what the UN described as the “intransigence” of rebel and government factions. While the political arguments continue, tensions in the country remain high and last week the UN reported widespread human rights abuses, including summary executions, on both sides of the front line. One of the first hurdles N’Cho faced was getting the main political leaders to sign up to the idea. “Initially they were very reluctant. They wanted to know who was behind it.” N’Cho said. “They thought their enemies were setting a trap for them.” Using a touch-tone telephone, callers can select their preferred presidential candidate by selecting a name and corresponding number from the list of 10 on a recorded message. “I thought it was worthwhile to try to set up some structure that can conduct opinion polls,” said N’Cho, who first experimented with an internet-based poll. There are no independent market research institutes in Cote d’Ivoire and the National Statistics Institute (INS) is government-run. The only previous attempt to carry out a nationwide political poll was launched in 1999 but was never finished as then president, Henri Konan Bedie, was toppled in a coup just before the year was out. While INS has doubts about N’Cho’s poll, an official there accepts the spirit in which it is being conducted. “I am not convinced of the reliability of this poll,” an INS official who asked not to be named, told IRIN. “But it could be a step in the right direction.” N’Cho, who is well known for managing two successful independent newspapers, Soir Info and L’Inter, is the first to admit that his poll is not without its faults. Published results thus far put President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) firmly in first place with 65 percent of the some 10,000 votes cast. Ex-president Bedie and Alassane Ouattara, who leads the opposition Rally of the Republicans (RDR), cleared less than 20 percent of votes between them – representing far less support than the two heavyweights claim to have. Indeed, results from Cote d’Ivoire’s most recent elections – municipal polls held in 2001 – suggest that N’Cho’s results are askew. The RDR romped home with a healthy majority of council seats in the local polls. “It is clear that the preliminary results of my poll do not reflect the real balance of power in Cote d’Ivoire,” N’Cho said, explaining that the results showed repeated votes for Gbagbo from members of his FPI youth wing who had used the same phone over and over. Others dismiss the poll as slanted as it costs 360 CFA francs, or US 60 cents, to place a vote – a substantial sum in a country where most people earn less than US $2 a day. And most Ivorians don’t even have a telephone. “Cote d’Ivoire does not have the proper infrastructure to carry out this kind of research,” writer Boris Traore said. “At best, this thing is a half-baked idea.” But N’Cho is undeterred. “It’s about transparency and democracy,” N’Cho said. “It’s about showing that you can carry out an opinion poll in an African country.” “Once we have eliminated the multiple callers and cleaned the records, I am confident that we will end up with reliable results.”