Gbagbo won 38.3 percent of the 4.4 million votes cast in Sunday’s presidential election, compared with 32 percent for Ouattara, a former prime minister and senior IMF official, the West African country’s election commission said.
The long-delayed poll in the world’s top cocoa grower is meant to reunite the once prosperous nation after a 2002-3 war split it in two and left the north in the hands of rebels.
But many Ivorians also feared that a close race could be disputed, leading to violent street protests in a country with a history of trouble at election time.
However the main city of Abidjan was calm on Thursday and cocoa exporters who had temporarily stopped operations this week were expected to restart on Thursday. Cocoa futures traded in London were largely flat.
In the first official complaint, third-placed Henri Konan Bedie called late on Wednesday for a recount and demanded the election commission stop announcing results before the official result was given. Bedie ended up with 25.2 percent of the vote.
“The PDCI ... rejects a clear intention to rig the results. The PDCI ... demands that the announcement of the result be stopped and a recount of the ballots be carried out,” he said in a statement read out by his campaign director Djedje Mady.
CONCERTED PRESSURE
Yet a concerted challenge by Bedie will be tough given that the UN mission and election observers have largely praised the poll. On Wednesday, several hundred of Bedie’s supporters had gathered at his PDCI party headquarters warning that they would not accept the results.
As predicted, Ouattara fared better in the north, where he is from and where soldiers who felt neglected by successive southern-dominated governments rose up against Gbagbo in 2002.
Bedie scored well in central regions where there are many of his fellow Baoule voters. Gbagbo’s support base was focused on the south and the west of the country.
International observers praised Ivory Coast’s poll on Sunday, but concerns had risen over the lack of results and the mounting tensions in the days that followed.
They also raised concerns about being shut out of the process of tabulating results on some occasions.
“Our observers were refused entry several times,” Maria Espinosa, deputy chief of an EU observers mission. “International observers should be there for the whole process.”
If the second round delivers a clear winner and any disputes can be resolved, it may entice investors back to what was once a rare economic success story in an unstable region. Ivory Coast’s $2.3 billion Eurobond traded just below 10 percent early on Thursday.
All candidates have come under concerted pressure by the United Nations — which deployed 9,500 peacekeeping soldiers and police to secure the vote — and foreign powers to accept the results.
