Electoral commission chaos delays results again

Confusion reigned at the headquarters of Ivory Coast’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in Abidjan on Tuesday night, when two representatives of the president’s party within the commission prevented the provisional results of the second round of presidential elections from being announced. The last round of elections took place Sunday, pitting incumbent President Gbagbo against former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara.

In front of many journalists, one of the two men snatched the pages with the early results from the hands of IEC spokesman Yacouba Bamba.

"This is an electoral hold-up! These results have not been validated by the Central Committee!” Gbagbo’s backers shouted at the press, who were asked to pack up and leave. Shortly after this chain of events, the UN Secretary General’s special representative in Ivory Coast, Young-jin Choi, visited the IEC to look into the incident.

Originally scheduled for Tuesday morning, the announcement of provisional results was pushed to Wednesday morning. By midday however reporters were still being barred from the electoral commission's headquarters, which were surrounded by soldiers and police.

"We're still prevented from entering," said special correspondent Francois Picard by phone from the economic capital of Abidjan. "We've seen in the interim a ballet of diplomats go in and come out. Once source telling France 24 that the situation within the Independent Electoral Commission, which includes all the various parties, is tense."

"Yacouba acted in violation of accepted procedure by the IEC… which specifies that the results should be consolidated by the central committee before they are announced," Pascal Affi Nguessan, spokesperson for Laurent Gbagbo, explained on television on Wedenesday.

The only figures so far released have been the results of the diaspora vote and voter turnout, estimated at 70 percent.

Meanwhile, the two finalists’ parties have been accusing each other of having prevented smooth election proceedings in several regions. Since Monday, Laurent Gbagbo’s Presidential Majority (LMP) has been seeking to invalidate the vote in three northern regions, where Alassane Ouattara recorded his best first-round results.

Tuesday afternoon, Gbagbo's party held a press conference during which the monitors deployed in Bouake and Korhogo testified to attacks by members of the former rebel New Forces (FN), which replied by describing the charges as “poisonous” disinformation.

Ouattara’s Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) coalition party in turn denounced the "seizure of power" by the outgoing president, while castigating the intimidation and pressure on voters in the south and central west of the country.

Without denying the occurrence of some incidents, the European Union (EU) observer mission said that in 96 percent of the polling stations to which it had access, voting had taken place under acceptable conditions. The day before, Young-jin Choi said that the second round was held in an "overall democratic climate".