Nearly 8 million voters are called to the polls this Saturday in Côte d’Ivoire for the municipal and regional elections. The elections concern 31 regions and 201 municipalities. In total, the independent electoral commission registered 749 lists of candidates for the municipal elections and 93 lists of candidates for the regional elections.
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With our correspondents in Abidjan, Bineta Diagne and Francois-Hume Ferkatadji
Are there still political strongholds? Will the RHDH maintain its territorial supremacy? For the political parties, these polls will make it possible to gauge their weight in each locality. In this sense, these elections are a test for the parties in order to prepare for the 2025 presidential election.
In the RHDP, the ruling party, several ministers are in the running to try to keep their town halls. Thus, in the commune of Abobo, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kandia Camara is seeking another mandate. Just like Amadou Koné, the Minister of Transport and outgoing mayor of Bouaké.
For the PDCI, the challenge is to motivate voters despite the disappearance of its historic leader, Henri Konan Bédié and the divisions within the party. Evidenced by this flowering of independent candidates, especially in Cocody, Port-Bouët and Plateau.
For their part, the militants of the former president Laurent Gbagbo will try to reconquer their lost bastions after several years of calling for a boycott.
Read alsoRegional elections in Côte d’Ivoire: “A test for Laurent Gbagbo’s new party”
Political reconfiguration
The election is presented as the most open since the end of the political crises that shook the country between 2002 and 2011. All political sensitivities will be represented in an Ivorian political landscape that has changed. And for the independent candidates, these elections will also make it possible to understand the weight of the independent candidates, eager to get out of a form of tripartism which has marked the political history of the last three decades.
Because if in 2018, during the previous regional election, the pro-Gbagbo fringe of the FPI had decided to boycott the elections while the PDCI was allied with the RHDP, the ruling party. Since then, Côte d’Ivoire has undergone a major political reconfiguration. Laurent Gbagbo, back in his native land, created a new party, the PPA-CI, and entered into an electoral agreement with the PDCI.
“ For the Ivorian populations, there is no longer any issue »
The challenge is also to mobilize voters to return to the polls. In 2018, turnout was 35.78% for the municipal ballot and 36.20% for the regional ones. And many tensions and accusations of fraud had punctuated the ballot. On Friday evening, the president of the Independent Electoral Commission called on candidates and voters to show discipline and to use legal channels in the event of a dispute.
The vote of young people born in the early 2000s will be particularly scrutinized this year because these new voters will have a significant weight for the presidential election of 2025. Who are they ? What is their political culture? Will they vote? asks sociologist Severin Kouamé.
Because the question of participation is on everyone’s lips. Will these elections arouse particular enthusiasm? Severin Kouame is skeptical. “ The ballot presents an issue for the political parties, but for the Ivorian populations, there is no longer an issue. “, he analyzes, describing voters disillusioned by the excesses of a democratic system out of breath, based more on the political apparatuses than on the needs of the populations.
Duels to watch
In total, there are more than 30,400 candidates for municipal elections and more than 5,200 for regional ones.
Saturday, several localities will be to watch. There is the Cavally region, in the west, where the Minister of Public Service, Anne Ouloto, is seeking a second term as head of the regional council. Opposite her is Hubert Oulaye, the executive secretary of the PPA-CI, which is in alliance with the party of the late Henri Konan Bédié.
Another interesting duel will take place in the Haut-Sassandra region between the outgoing chairman of the council, Alphonse Djédjé Mady, and the Minister of Youth, Mamadou Touré, who defends the colors of the RHDP.
For the municipal elections, it will be necessary to keep an eye on the commune of Yopougon, where the opposition is divided against Adama Bictogo, the president of the National Assembly.
The election for mayor of the Plateau sounds like a return match between Jacques Ehouo, the outgoing mayor, and Fabrice Sawegnon, the candidate of the ruling party.
And in the commune of Cocody, the PDCI is divided between Jean-Marc Yacé, the outgoing mayor, and the deputy Yasmina Ouégnin.
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