Amid an atmosphere of tension between the actors in the political scene in Côte d’Ivoire before the general elections scheduled for next October, rumors spread on social media with a military coup in the country, supported by pictures and videos showing huge crowds coming out in the streets and burning buildings claimed to be in the city of Abidjan.
Like other West African countries, Cote d’Ivoire was famous for the chaos and electoral violence that occurs mostly with every presidential vote in the country.
A decade ago witnessed a civil war, or an armed conflict that killed more than 3,000 people, due to the results of the presidential elections in which Hassan Wattara won, and his predecessor, Laurent Gabbago, refused to recognize it, which led to bloody confrontations between the army factions that did not stop until the French armed forces intervened to support Wattara.
The rumors of the coup coincided a few weeks after the issuance of a decision from the judiciary to exclude the opposition Tijan Tiam from running for the upcoming elections, which was considered by its supporters as a political position on the government.
Did the government clarify the rumors of the coup?
Although the coup rumors were widely circulated on social media platforms, especially on Facebook and X, the security authorities announced that no violence was registered, but the residents of Abidjan denied these allegations.
Last Thursday, the National Information Systems Security Agency denied the registration of any security incident or a coup attempt in Cote d’Ivoire.
The agency said in a statement published by local media sites, “The publications currently circulated on Facebook and X platforms, which claim a coup in the country, are unfounded, and they are part of a campaign of deliberate and coordinated misleading.”
How did the rumor of the coup start?
The rumors of the coup began last Wednesday, after videos spread on the media, in which protesters appearing to set fire to shopping centers, and small shops, which were said to be in the economic capital, Abidjan.
Although the official language in Côte d’Ivoire is French, most of the publications and allegations about the coup were written in the English language, which raised doubts about its source, and the party behind or directed to it.
Some of these publications claimed that the Chief of Staff of the Ivorian Army, General Lasina Dumbia, has been assassinated, and that President Patara is missing, in addition to the arrest of a number of prominent officials in the ruling regime, but the office of the President of the Republic denied these allegations, and did not convey a credible media outlet.
The local government and private media did not publish a news related to the violence that was widely promoted on social media.
At a time when these rumors spread, President Hassan Wattara appeared last Thursday at the usual weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers, and he attended a ceremony honoring the late President Felix Hofea Bouani, alongside Togolese President Four Ghannasingby.
What are the causes of political tension in the country?
Since the announcement of this year the organization of the general elections in October, Côte d’Ivoire has entered a wave of political debate between actors and influential people in the national scene.
This debate brought back to mind the era of electoral violence, and the specter of the internal war that the country knew in the 2010 polling when former President Laurent Gabago refrained from handing power to his good successor, who won 54% of the total votes of the voters at the time.
This crisis developed into an armed conflict in which French forces participated to resolve the situation in favor of President Wattara, and ended with the arrest of Gabbago in April 2011.
Gabbago was tried on charges of war crimes before the International Criminal Court, but it was acquitted in 2019, then the national judiciary condemned him with embezzlement from the central bank of West African countries, and a sentence was sentenced to 20 years in prison, before he came out with a general amnesty without obtaining his civil rights that allow him to run for the presidency again.
Because of these tensions and fears of the return of the country to the stage of war and electoral violence, the UN Secretary -General in the West Africa and the Central Coast, Linardo Santos Simao, visited Cote d’Ivoire last April, with the aim of inviting all parties to adhere to calm and arbitrate the supreme interest of the country.
Simao met President Wattara, leaders of the Independent Electoral Committee and leaders of the political opposition parties, and urged them to prevail in reason and the logic of wisdom, and assured them that the United Nations is watching with caution in the political path that the country will live in in the next few months.
In December last year, the ruling party of Côte d’Ivoire said it supports the nomination of Hassan Wattara for a fourth term, which increased the opposition’s concerns about the danger of the president to violate the constitution that allows only two presidential states.
Analysts believe that many young leaders in the Ivorian army are admired by the experience of the coupists in the African Sahel region, and they may find an opportunity to move and enter the country into the list of military rulings, if the President Wattara decides not to respect the constitution and run for a new term.
What is the street’s position on President Wattara?
President Hassan Patara is a national figure who has a strong presence not only at the local level, but also throughout the West Africa.
Wattara has a wide popular acceptance, as it has worked over the past decade on the stability of the economy and its achievement of strong growth rates, which made the country an important economic axis in the regional framework of Côte d’Ivoire.
On the political side, it is seen as a university figure that tends to calm and seek security, and is credited with political stability, and away from the causes of electoral violence that was taking place due to the positions of his predecessor Gabbago, who played a lot on the chord of races and nationalities.
The directions of Wattara in the tendency to political stability were embodied by issuing it by law with the general amnesty of Gabbago, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and received him in the presidential palace in 2023 as a former head of the state that should be treated with respect and appreciation.
However, his opponents accuse him of trying to keep power through unconstitutional methods, and by using state institutions to exclude his opponents, as happened in the case of the opposition Tijan Tiam, who was prevented from running because of his French nationality.
His close relationship with France, which is increasingly seen in West Africa as a “greedy colonial force”, has negatively affected his popularity, especially among young people who represent the general majority of the country’s population.
From Tiam’s crowns? And why was he excluded from candidacy?
Tijan Tiam, 62, is a technocratic figure, and one of the most prominent and most present competencies in the political and economic scene in Côte d’Ivoire, and descends from an ocean with a history of power and governance, as he is the son of the sister of the founding president Hofea Poianier.
On the academic and academic levels, Tiam is classified as one of the important scientific competencies in the country, as it is the first Ivorian to study in the classes of the High School of Engineers in France, “Politkenik”, after he passed the difficult exams to enter it.
After his return from Paris, he held the position of Minister of Planning and Development between 1997-1998, but after the military coup against the civilian government in the same period, he refused to participate in the ministerial formation in which he was proposed, and his face towards Europe.
In Europe, he held high -level leadership positions, most notably the leadership of the British “Product” group, and the chairmanship of the World Investment Bank “Credit Suis” in Switzerland.
In 2022, Tiam returned to the country and entered the political world, joined the Democratic Party that ruled the country from independence in 1960 until the coup against the civil government in 1998, and is now the main party of the opposition.
In the year 2023, he was elected president of the same party, which made many young people join him, given the strong presence of Tiam in the political scene by virtue of his experience abroad, and his previous stances in opposing military rulings.
With the widespread support he enjoys in political circles, the judiciary was ordered on April 22 to remove his name from the candidacy lists, on the pretext of obtaining French citizenship in 1987.
Although he abandoned French citizenship last February, the court considered that he did not do so before registering his name in the electoral regulations in 2022, which makes him legally inappropriate to run or even vote.
Tiam and his lawyers rejected this decision and described it as not fair, and they justified this that a number of the team’s players in Côte d’Ivoire have double nationalities without withdrawing the national recognition.
In an interview with the BBC channel, Tiam said, “Evoaria was born and I will remain so, what is going on with us is a clear attempt to prevent our party from winning.”
Will Temma try to run? What are the most prominent qualifications for the race?
It is still not certain whether Tiam will be able to return to the list of candidates, but it is still legally and politically fighting to win the political battle, and to include his name in the electoral regulations.
In May, Tiam resigned from the Presidency of the Democratic Party, but he was re -elected by 99% of the members of the National Congress, and his position was not announced after that regarding his attempt to run.
Through interviews and letters directed at the political masses, Tiam pledged to attract foreign investments as he had previously did when he was a minister in 1998, and he also talked about an economic plan to break the link of the local currency with the African franc of France, the former colonizer of the country for a period of decades.
In addition to Tiam, there are other candidates with a presence in the political scene, most notably Pascal Avi Ngisan, 67, who had previously assumed the position of Prime Minister during the era of former President Gbagbo, and he is a close ally.
In the same context, the former first lady, Simon Gabbago, announced the free president of the former president, to nominate her for the “capable generations movement” for the position of President of the Republic.
Simon Gabbago has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015, on charges of undermining state security and prejudice to public security, but the current President Hassan Wattara released it in the General Amnesty Law issued in 2018.