A fake story of the West African Court Zin coup has emerged this week amid growing tensions in the October general elections.
Several accounts on social media sites, including Facebook and X, have posted videos of large crowds on the streets with burning buildings.
However, no violence has been reported this week by security forces or other government authorities. Abidjan residents also denied the claims on social media.
On Thursday, the national agency of Information Systems Security (ANSSI) in Coast denied the rumor.
In a statement released on a local media site, the agency said: [Ivory Coast] …This claim is completely unfounded. This is the result of an intentional and coordinated disinformation campaign. ”
The rumor comes weeks after popular opposition politician Tijane Tiam was banned from office after his qualifications were challenged in court for specialisation related to his citizenship status. Tiam has sued the ruling and argues that the ban is political.
Cote d’Ivoire, an African cocoa powerhouse, has a long history of electoral violence, with one episode swirling into armed conflicts 10 years ago, resulting in the deaths of thousands.
This time, we were added to tension, fearing that President Arasin Oattara might run for a fourth term. The president has two terms of limitations, but the constitutional reform in 2016 resets the clock on his terms, allowing his supporters to hold a third five-year term in 2020. This argument was available to see him on his ballot this October.
This is what we know about the current political situation in the country.
How did the coup rumours begin?
There will be a video showing a demonstration on the streets this Wednesday showing shops and malls being fired. French is the official language of Ivory Coast, but most of the posts and blogs with images claiming to be from Abidjan, claiming that a coup is ongoing.
Some posts also alleged that the country’s Army Chief of Staff, Lassina Dumbia, was assassinated and President Oattara was missing. These claims are not true and are denied by the President’s office. Trustworthy media, including Ivorian State Media and Private News Media, did not report any suspected violence.
It is unclear how rumors emerged that President Ouattara had gone missing. On Thursday, he chaired the daily cabinet meeting in the capital. He also attended a ceremony commemorating the respected former president of Felix Houhuette Bonney, alongside Togo’s President Faure Gunassinbe.
Why is there political tensions in this country?
The upcoming general election on October 25th underlies the current political tensions within the country.
Elections have been violent in the past. During the general election in October 2010, former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to hand over power to Oatala, who had been declared the winner by the Election Commission.
Tensed political negotiations failed, and the situation eventually swirled into a civil war, backed by the French, surrounded the Gbagbo national army and armed with Outarah’s army. France was the former colonial period of Ivory Coast, and Oatala has close ties to Paris.
Approximately 3,000 people have been killed in the violence. The capture of Gbagbo on April 11, 2011 marked the end of the conflict. He was later tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2019 for war crimes and was acquitted.
That painful history has fueled the fear that this year’s poll could also be violent as several opposition candidates, including Gbagbo, have been banned from running, mainly due to past convictions. In 2018, the former president was sentenced to 20 years in prison for looting the Central Bank of West Africa (BCEAO) during the country’s post-election crisis.
Last December, the Houpouetists’ governing rally for the Democracy and Peace (RHDP) Party nominated Ouattara for the fourth term as president. So far, Ouattara has refused to say whether he is going to run, and many feel that the president is welcoming him, that he is going to run, causing concern among many. However, analysts believe the party’s nomination is set on the stage for his ultimate candidacy.
Analysts also say there is widespread sympathy for young military leaders who have taken power in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso and, unlike Outala, remain hostile towards France.
What is the popular view of Ouattara?
He has been praised for overseeing rapid economic stability over the past decade and a half, which has made the country a regional economic hub.
Ouattara is also believed to have brought some degree of political peace to the country. In 2023 he welcomed Gubagbo, who had lived in Brussels since his ICC innocence in 2021. Since then, the campaign has not been as inflamed as in the 2000s. Gbagbo played with ethnic sentiment to oppose Ouattara, whose father was originally from Burkina Faso.
However, critics of Ouattara have accused him of fighting for power in unconstitutionality. Others accused state agencies of forcing political adversaries to the railroad, including the latest incident involving Thiam.
His intimacy with France is increasingly seen as rog arrogant and neo-colonianism, especially by young people in French-speaking West Africa, but has not benefited from the president from the country’s under the age of 35.
Who is Tidjane Thiam and why was he forbidden from elections?
Thiam, 62, is a prominent politician and businessman in Koiboria’s political world. He was the nephew of the respected houphouet-boigny and the first Koiborian to pass the entrance exam to the prestigious Polytechnic Engineering School in France. He returned from France and served as Minister of Planning and Development from 1998 to 1999, with a coup that destroyed the civilian government and the army ruled the country.
Tiam left the country, denying the position of the cabinet provided by the military government. He first acquired a well-known position, as CEO of Prudential, a UK insurance group, and as credit officer at Global Investment Bank. The corporate spy scandal at the bank led to his resignation in 2020 after colleagues accused Tiam of spying on him. Tiam escaped involvement.
After returning to Ivory Coast in 2022, Tiam rejoined the Democrats (PDCI), a former governing party that took power from independence in 1960 to the 1999 coup, and is now a major opposition party.
In December 2023, party representatives voted overwhelmingly to see Tiam become his next leader after the death of former chief and former president Henri Conan Bedi. At the time, PDCI officials said Thiam represented a breath of fresh air for the country’s politics, and many young people seemed ready to support him as the next president.
However, his ambitions were suspended on April 22, when Tiam took away French nationality in 1987 and automatically lost Koiboria’s citizenship in accordance with the laws of the country, thus ordering that his name be taken from the list of candidates.
The politician waived his French nationality in February this year, but the court ruled that he did not do so before registering himself in the election in 2022, and therefore qualified for being a leader, presidential candidate, or even a voter.
Tiam and his lawyers argued that the law was inconsistent. The Iborian footballer from the country’s national team, noted in a single interview with reporters, although most are French citizens too, there are no restrictions on retaining Koiboria’s nationality. “The bottom line is that I was born a Koiborian,” Tiam told the BBC in an interview, accusing the government of trying to stop him from saying that he could be successful in this year’s election.
Thiam can stand, and who else is standing?
It is unclear whether Thiam will be able to legally return to the candidate list, but he is trying.
In May he resigned as PDCI president and was re-elected almost immediately with 99% of the vote. He has yet to say whether he will attempt to re-register as a candidate, but he is committed to continuing the fight.
Tiam has pledged to attract industrial investment in the country, as he once did as Minister, and to remove the country from the French-backed CFA currency economy that constitutes Western and Central African countries previously colonized by France.
Meanwhile, other strong candidates include Pascal Affi & Garthan, 67, former prime minister and a close alliance of Gubagbo.
Simone Gbagbo, a former first lady currently divorced from Gbagbo, will also run as a candidate for a capable generation of moves. She was sentenced to a 20-year term in 2015 for culpable national security, but in the second half of 2018 she was benefited from the amnesty law to promote national reconciliation.
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