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Wednesday, 19 January 2011

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Ivory Coast:

Post election stalemate continues

Colonial legacies and neocolonial strategies threaten African unity:

Laurent Gbagbo Alassane Ouattara

Seven weeks have passed since the Presidential election in Ivory Coast on November 28, 2010. The Election Commission declared the Opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara the winner. He was sworn in as President. But President Laurent Gbagbo hangs on to power on a decision of the Constitutional Council which declared the results in certain Northern districts as flawed. Thus there are two Presidents laying claim to office.

While Obagbo holds power, still his rival Ouattara is holed up in the Gulf Hotel in the Capital Abidjan with security being provided by the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces.

Armed Force

The African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union (EU), the United States (US) and the United Nations (UN) have recognized Ouattara as President. They have called upon Gbagbo to relinquish power. Yet he remains defiant.

The AU sent several missions to Ivory Coast in an effort at mediation. Its most recent mission has been entrusted to the Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga. So far the mission has not succeeded. This brings near intervention by a multinational Armed Force of the AU on behalf of Ouattara.

Though the AU decided unanimously to intervene militarily if needed, Nigeria has subsequently taken a stand against such intervention. Thus the monolithic unity displayed by the AU stands breached.

West African country

Ivory Coast is a West African country with a population equal to that of Sri Lanka and a territory that is five times that of Sri Lanka. It is bordered in the East by Ghana, in the West by Guinea and Liberia, in the North by Burkina Faso and in the South by the Gulf of Guinea.

It is rich in natural resources. It is the world’s largest exporter of cocoa beans. Its other exports include petroleum, natural gas, cocoa and palm oil. Its wealth also includes diamonds, manganese, cobalt, gold, iron ore, bauxite, copper, silica sand and hydrel power.

Politically Ivory Coast is polarized between the largely Muslim North and the largely Christian South. Though the civil war that engulfed the country in 2002-3 has ended the current crisis is pregnant with the possibility of a fresh civil war breaking out and even spreading beyond its borders.

Colonial powers

The African continent has been burdened with both Inter-state and intra-state conflicts that developed into wars throughout its post independence history.

Such conflicts could be very often attributed to two reasons. First is the indiscriminate division of the continent into new States by colonial powers without considering the physical, sociological and cultural diversities and uniformities.

The second is the need for them to own or exploit the continents vast natural resources.

Currently it is the neocolonial strategies that still perpetuate these conflicts and wars.

 

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