• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Ivory Coast President Wants Some Election Results Annulled

VOA News | Abidjan 30 November 2010

The president of Ivory Coast is contesting results from Sunday's election, saying voting in some rebel-held areas was not transparent. An overnight curfew remains in place following the deaths of at least six people in electoral violence.

Voters in Ivory Coast have official results from only a small number of polling stations outside the country. About 10,000 ballots in an election of more than four million registered voters shows former prime minister Alassane Ouattara leading president Laurent Gbagbo by about 60 percent to 40 percent.

As the wait for domestic results continues, President Gbagbo's party is already calling on the electoral commission to annul returns from three northern districts. Pascal Nguessan, the ruling coalition's spokesman, says President Gbagbo's party reserves the right to react accordingly so that elections in the areas of Savanes, Denguele, and Worodougou are invalidated because he says those votes did not respect the rules of transparency.

They are areas of strong support for Ouattara who won more than 85 percent of the vote there in the first round.

The electoral commission has not responded publicly to the Gbagbo campaign's request. Electoral officials say they are delaying the announcement of results to make sure the totals they release will stand up to scrutiny.

Both the Gbagbo and Ouattara campaigns say some of their supporters were prevented from entering polling stations Sunday.

The European Union had 120 observers here who visited nearly 1,000 polling stations. Observer mission chief Cristian Preda says voting procedures were respected in 75 percent of polling stations visited and were acceptable, in the judgement of his observers, in another 21 percent.

Preda says the electoral process is not yet finished. There are no results, so the European Union can not make a definitive assessment. He says there were irregularities, but it is not up to the European Union to complain about those irregularities. It is up to the two candidates.

Before the vote, both men said they would accept its outcome and appealed to their supporters to stay calm in the wait for results.