To many Ghanaians, Cote d’Ivoire is a second natural home. I am one of them, for it is the only country in the world I know where I can step into a taxi and be able right away to speak to the driver in my own tongue. 150 years of colonial boundaries mean little, I found out there.

It is the only place where I have checked into my room in a hotel, the first song I hear on the hotel radio is a popular Ghanaian hi-life.

More important, once when my little 8-year-old son was separated momentarily from the rest of the family during a shopping spree in Abidjan, and found himself lost, he was able to take a taxi to where the family’s host worked -- a huge international bank-- and get him to come down, while the taxi driver waited patiently! Not a hair on his young head was harmed, and he did it all without being able to speak a word of French.

I’ve often wondered, in retrospective, sweat-breaking terror, how the taxi driver had the goodness of heart not to worry about getting paid?

That was Cote d’Ivoire that was. Its people were generally friendly and open; and its ability to attract tourists wasunbeatable. Once, Air Afrique, the much-lamented African route-master, invited me to be its guest. Camped at the Hotel Ivoire, we went to a new tourist attraction each day.

The one I most vividly remember is the “adults-only” beach resort at Assouinde, where a hotel called Jardin d’Eden provides everything that one can imagine being offered in the real Garden of Eden. Good surfing, tasty prawns skewered in the shell, cold beer -- it was indeed heaven.

But Cote d’Ivoire was living on borrowed time. By the time its first President, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, died in December 1993, he had ruled for over 40 years. One of his fiercest opponents was a college lecturer called Laurent Gbagbo, who stubbornly defied Houphouet, endured persecution and bravely stood against Houphouet in the first multi-party elections held in 1990.

This doggedness endeared Gbagbo to those who aspired to live under a democracy in Cote d’Ivoire. Houphouet-Boigny died at the age of 85 in December 1993, and Gbagbo watched with interest as Houphouet’s party, the Democratic Party of Cote d’Ivoire (PDCI) tore itself apart in a succession race. It was the former finance minister and substantive chairman of the National Assembly, Henri Konan Bedie, who emerged on top.

Among Houphouet’s appointees who lost out to Bedie was Alassane Dramane Ouattara, whom Houphouet had appointed prime minister after plucking him back home from the IMF (where Outtara was a deputy managing director) to put him in charge of the [Central] Bank of West Africa, before appointing him prime minister.

Bedie, however, soon began to dig his own political grave.

He embarked upon a policy of “Ivoirite”, which was plainly tribalistic. The policy sought to deprive people who were born in, and had lived in Cote d’Ivoire, but who had one or two parents born in a neighboring country, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal or Niger -- the neighboring countries that had once been formed into a federation with Cote d’Ivoire by the French -- of their Ivorian citizenship.

It was an unjust policy, for apart from the fact that most of the people affected did not know their “ancestral” homes too well, it also negated the contribution they had made to the wealth of Cote d’Ivoire, mainly with their labour on cocoa farms and timber-yards.

The absurdity of the policy was amply demonstrated when Ouattara, who had been deemed fit enough to become Prime Minister, was told, in July 1999, that he was a “foreigner” (from Burkina Faso) and therefore the electoral code did not allow him to participate in the coming presidential election.

It was the absurdity of Ivoirite that cooked Bedie’s political goose, for there were many soldiers, artisans, technicians, teachers and civil servants who found their civil rights nullified overnight in the country of their birth. In December 1999, a group of soldiers toppled Bedie. They appointed General Robert Guei, who, they believed, was in sympathy with their sentiments, to be president. Guei was supposed to organise free elections and hand over power to whoever won. But Guei had also been bitten by the xenophobic bug, and prevented Ouattara from contesting. But he allowed Gbagbo to contest, only to rig the election to show that he, Guei, had won.

The Ivorian electorate were having none of it, and chased Guei out of power. Gbagbo became President. Everyone heaved a sight of relief, hoping that Gbagbo, who had been in opposition for so long, would treat other opposition leaders with respect and organise free, democratic elections.

But instead, Gbagbo largely resurrected the ethnic policies that had brought Bedie and Guei down! He eventually entered a series of bizarre alliances of convenience with Ouattara, which always seemed built on sand, and culminated in a full armed rebellion hat split the country in two in 2002. At each negotiated “agreement”, he has not hidden the fact that he wants to have the upper hand, or nothing.

The current crisis was caused by Gbagbo, after postponing presidential election year after year, finally agreeing to hold the election in November 2010. But before the election, there was much trouble over the identity cards that were to be used in registering voters. Reason? To try and prevent :foreigners” from voting! Déjà vu or what?

But worse, Gbagbo had booby-trapped the election-result announcement mechanism beforehand. Somehow, he had got the UN and everyone else involved in organizing the election to take their eye off the ball, by inserting a harmless-looking provision in the electoral regulations, stipulating that the Independent Electoral Commission would pass the results on to the Constitutional Court, which would give the results final certiication. A mere formality, right?

Wrong! Whereas the Independent Electoral Commission announced that Ouattara had got over 54% and Gbagbo, less than 45%, the Constitutional Court said some of the votes cast for Ouattara in the northern part of the coutry were “invalid“! When these votes were taken out of the total number of votes cast, said the Constitutional Court, Gbagbo got 51% of the votes! So Gbagbo had won.

Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission was denied access to national radio and television. Indeed, Gbgbo, acting with “malice aforethought”, shut down almost all the media in the country.
He also closed all the country’s borders.


It is a clear case of an incumbent using the apparatus o the state to steal an election and the international players -- the UN, the AU and ECOWAS, as well as France, the US and the European Union -- have all unanimously condemned Gbagbo’s action and come down on the side of Ouattara.

But will they unite in imposing measures that will make Gbagbo give up his silly attempt to steal the election?

I find it troubling that the UN in particular (which has 9,000 soldiers in Cote d‘Ivoire) and the other actors in this bizarre Ivorian business, could not have obtained enough intelligence on the ground to detect Gbagbo’s intention to steal the election.

If they had had an idea of what he was planning -- and they should have -- they could have checkmated him before he could bring the country once more to the brink of civil war.
What did they think the brouhaha over the identity cards, for instance, was all about?

When the results were being delayed, what did they think was happening?

It is not good enough for officials entrusted with
ensuring that elections are carried out peacefully in a volatile situation -- such as the Ivorian one -- to take the “good faith” of the main actors for granted.

Any blood that is shed -- and God forefend none is shed -- will be upon the heads of many, who saw and heard Gbagbo, but were fooled by his smile, without being able to penetrate into his psyche to get the true meaning of why he smiles so much.

Now, the human fire-extinguishers are all making a beeline or Cote d’Ivoire. The most high profile of them is ex-President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. He has experience of the ways of the Ivorian actors, for he managed to get an agreement between Gbagbo and the “New Forces” to come into operation in 2004.

But the ink was hardly dry on it when it began to fall apart. So it will be a miracle of he can find a way through the current impasse and give Cote d’Ivoire another chance for peace.

We must all pray for the success of Mr Mbeki and the other negotiators. For the vultures of civil war are hovering over Cote d’Ivoire once again -- hungry as ever, for the flesh of our poor brothers and sisters.