Ivory Coast Sees Return to Anti-Foreigner Rhetoric Ahead of Vote

(Bloomberg) -- The leader of Ivory Coast’s second-biggest political party is taking an anti-foreigner stance as campaigning for next year’s presidential elections gears up, sparking concerns of a return to the divisive politics that fueled almost a decade of conflict in the world’s top cocoa grower.

Former President Henri Konan Bedie, who first emphasized the difference between “real” Ivorians and migrants in the 1990s, accused President Alassane Ouattara’s administration of favoring members of a “certain ethnic group” for public positions and allowing “armed foreigners” to exploit the West African nation’s resources. The 85-year-old also told his party’s executive committee that the authorities weren’t doing enough to stop foreigners from fraudulently obtaining Ivorian identity cards.

In a country where almost a third of the population is estimated to have parents who were immigrants, the issue of identity is explosive.

Ivory Coast was divided into a rebel-held north and a government-run south for almost 10 years following a failed coup. The rebels, who were mostly from the north and considered non-native Ivorians, overwhelmingly supported Ouattara, whose father hailed from the then-French colony that’s now neighboring Burkina Faso.

Ouattara was barred from standing in elections twice on the grounds that his nationality was questionable before he defeated Laurent Gbagbo in a 2010 vote.

His ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace already said earlier this month that Bedie should refrain from using the same rhetoric that fueled the 2002 rebellion.

Bedie, who backed Ouattara in 2010, withdrew from the ruling RHDP coalition last year because he wanted the alliance to nominate a candidate from his own party, which derives most of its support from the ethnic Baoule.

While Ivory Coast has been largely peaceful since Ouattara assumed office in 2011, the divide between north and south still exists and Bedie is “throwing more wood on the fire”, said Francis Akindes, a professor of Sociology at the Alassane Ouattara University.

“While Bedie’s statement instills fear in the northerners, we now have the government saying Bedie is stoking old sentiments over who’s a foreigner and who’s Ivorian,” Akindes said in the commercial capital, Abidjan. “Both sides are pulling at the rope, and this resonates with voters.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Katarina Hoije in Abidjan at khoije@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net, Pauline Bax

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