Storms still brewing over disarmament

Six months ahead of an election deadline in war-divided Cote d’Ivoire, President Laurent Gbagbo is falling into step with international mediators, but his political heavyweight wife Simone is far from being on the same track. At a meeting earlier this month with African Union chairman and Congolese President Denis Sassou N’Guesso, the key players in the country’s more than three-year war agreed that a programme to disarm rebels and pro-government militia could be held simultaneously with an identification programme, aimed at giving ID papers to Ivorians who to date have no documents proving their nationality. The agreement was hailed as a significant breakthrough in building peace before the polls, deftly sweeping aside the two main obstacles to holding presidential elections by the UN deadline of end October in one fell swoop. And after some statements to the contrary, Gbagbo this week restated his support for the concomitant disarmament and identification process. However wife Simone Gbagbo, a leading figure in the ruling Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party who carries much influence with the hard-line Young Patriots movement that was at the forefront of anti-UN protests last January, is highly critical of the plans. “Cote d’Ivoire won’t do identification and disarmament simultaneously,” Simone Gbagbo said in a speech last week. “Those who talk about concomitance are dreaming.” Referring to rebels in control of the northern half of the country, Simone said it was out of the question that “foreigners who have killed, sliced throats and sometimes even drank the blood of Ivorians” would receive nationality documents. Some Ivorians descend from migrants who originally hail from northern neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso. And on Wednesday, parliament met for a second time despite the expiry of its mandate late last year, a fact that has been upheld by UN-backed peace mediators. The session proved to be a fiery affair with ruling party stalwarts alleging that the identification process would be riddled with fraud. National Assembly speaker Mamadou Koulibaly, seen as a hardliner within the FPI, opened the session by accusing the main opposition party, the Rally of the Republicans, which has a strong following in the rebel held north, of inflating the number of voters by issuing fake identity cards. Brandishing an allegedly falsified document as apparent proof, a triumphant Koulibaly said: “this is fraud with nationality, this is fraud with identity, electoral fraud is being prepared under our very noses and they are talking about ‘concomitance’.” According to a western diplomat, the statements are mostly rhetoric and hyperbole ahead of election campaigning. With just six months to go before a planned presidential poll, he said “the ruling party is trying to keep its supporters whipped up.” “It keeps them together, it unifies them,” the diplomat told IRIN. “The danger is the young people, the students. One can only hope it doesn’t spill over into violence.” The parliamentary session, which was broadcast on Ivorian television, was exclusively attended by allies of the ruling party. The coalition of opposition parties boycotted the meeting, saying it was unconstitutional. “It’s not the role of a deputy to continue to whip up hate live on television,” said opposition spokesman Celestin Noutoua Youde. Also this week, militia leader Eugene Djue angrily warned that he was ready to start “the ultimate struggle for disarmament of the rebels and the total liberation of Cote d’Ivoire.” Djue, who is banned from travelling under UN sanctions, announced a demonstration against UN headquarters in Abidjan next month. Djue was one of the orchestrators of anti-UN protests in January that paralysed the main city Abidjan for four days.