Ivory Coast Votes For New President

Ivory Coast voted in a presidential election Sunday expected to return incumbent Alassane Ouattara to power amid hopes of cementing peace after years of violence and upheaval.
More than six million people are eligible to cast ballots but concern is high that the violence sparked by the last election in 2010 will this time render a low voter turnout.

“I want a lasting peace and work for my children,” said Bintou Coulibaly, a trader casting her ballot in a neighbourhood of the commercial capital, Abidjan.
Voting was due to begin at 0700 GMT but was slow to get underway, with some polling booths still closed two hours later. In Abidjan, many were an hour behind schedule. Polling officially ends at 1700 GMT.
The west African state, the world’s leading cocoa producer, needs a peaceful and credible election to draw a line under the deadly violence that marked Outtara’s victory five years ago.
But opposition figures have cried foul, with three candidates having withdrawn from the race which now leaves Outtara vying against six others.
“We’ll be far, very far from the 80 percent participation at the election in 2010,” one observer warned.
Around 3,000 died in the violence following the 2010 elections which pitted Ouattara against former strongman leader Laurent Gbagbo.
The crisis was a bloody epilogue to a decade of upheaval, splitting west Africa’s economic powerhouse between a rebel-held north and a loyalist south.

A top economist, Ouattara, 73, is seeking a solid first-round win to dodge the threat of a run-off against one of the six other presidential contenders.
Some 34,000 soldiers are on duty to ensure voting passes off peacefully, and preliminary results are expected early in the week.
Ouattara has campaigned on turning around Ivory Coast’s economy and securing stability after years of turmoil.
“For the next five years, we will strengthen our institutions to consolidate peace,” said Ouattara, rounding off his campaign at a rally of thousands of supporters in Abidjan.
The former deputy head of the IMF was finally inaugurated president in 2011 after weeks of violence that followed then president Gbagbo’s refusal to concede defeat in the election.
Gbagbo was eventually ousted by French-backed pro-Ouattara forces and is now in a Dutch jail. He goes on trial next month for war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Vanguard