The campaign for the local elections, which ended Thursday August 31 at midnight in Côte d’Ivoire, lasted only a week, but the stakes of the regional and municipal elections, scheduled for Saturday September 2, are multiple and range beyond the control of town halls and regional councils.

Two years from the next presidential term, these must first allow each party to gauge itself and measure its strengths. For the ruling party, the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), it will first of all be a question of maintaining its majority. For the opposition, to progress after years of absence.

In 2018, the turnout was 46.36% for regional and 36.20% for municipal, while in 2013 it peaked at 28.01% and 36.44% respectively, due in particular to the call for a boycott of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

Ten years later, former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo was freed from charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, left the FPI, returned to the country but he is still deregistered from the electoral lists, due to his conviction for the “robbery” of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), during the post-election crisis from December 2010 to April 2011. Although he will not be able to vote, he is however not no more question of boycott.

Laurent Gbagbo’s party on the starting line

In a press conference on August 22, Laurent Gbagbo, 78, encouraged his activists to go to the polls, saying his role was “to lead [his] party to power”. The party he founded in 2021, the African Peoples’ Party – Côte d’Ivoire (PPA-CI), had however widely denounced irregularities and fraud on the electoral lists in recent months.

A surmountable evil now seems to be saying the former head of state: “Never again will we miss the elections,” he said. The fact of having decided, after my arrest, that we would not go to the elections, caused us a lot of damage. Elections can no longer be missed. So we denounce fraud, but we continue to go to elections. The PPA-CI aims to reconquer its former bastions, which have passed in recent years in the bosom of the presidential party, in particular the commune of Yopougon, the largest in Abidjan, and the west of the country.

In several localities such as Agou, Daloa, Grand-Bassam and in the regions of Tonkpi, Gbôklé and Haut-Sassandra, Laurent Gbagbo’s party is counting on its alliance with the other major opposition party, the Parti Democratic Republic of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) . For the latter, the stakes are quite different: a month after the death of its president, the former head of state Henri Konan Bédié, the party which has still not designated an heir is gambling on its survival. His ambitions: to retain his strongholds in the center of the country, such as Yamoussoukro, the administrative capital, and Daoukro, the stronghold of Henri Konan Bédié, and perhaps recover Bouaké, the country’s second city, from the RHDP.

For the candidates of the presidential party, the issue is as much local as national, as much collective as personal. The more important the locality won, the greater the chances of obtaining or keeping a ministry in the next reshuffle, or a place of choice in the RHDP. The power has thus chosen to send almost all of its ministers in office to the race.

A few minor overflows

Prime Minister Patrick Achi is a candidate in the Mé region, the Minister of Youth and Sports, Mamadou Touré, will compete in Daloa against an alliance made up of two political figures, Alphone Djédjé Mady, the secretary general of the PDCI, and Stéphane Kipré, the son-in-law of Mr. Gbagbo. The President of the National Assembly, Adama Bictogo, will face Michel Gbagbo, the son of the former president, for the PPA-CI, and Augustin Dia Houphouët, for the PDCI, in Yopougon. These localities will be the most closely monitored.

In a country where each campaign the candidates compete with material promises to their potential voters, calls are circulating on WhatsApp groups to become aware of these excesses, and to take cash and donations in kind without necessarily then voting for the candidate.

Observers have also identified some minor overflows in recent days. Posters of the PDCI candidate vandalized in Maféré (south-east), a physical confrontation causing a slight injury between supporters of the RHDP and those of the PDCI in Azaguié (south-east), tensions in Toumodi (center)…

“Most of the incidents relate to the deterioration of communication materials, such as campaign posters, reassures Arsène Konan, coordinator of citizen electoral observation at the Consortium of civil society organizations for the elections in Côte d’Ivoire. We also recorded attempts at intimidation, directed in particular at dissident or independent candidates, and discriminatory remarks against women candidates. The observers will report on Sunday and the Independent Electoral Commission will have up to six days to publish the results.