Ivory Coast’s President Tipped to Win Second Term in Election

An official of Ivory Coast’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) holds a ballot as votes are counted in Abidjan after polls closed in Ivory Coast’s presidential election on October 25, 2015.

In West Africa Ivory Coast heads into presidential elections on Sunday with the incumbent Alassane Ouattara, campaigning on restoring stability, widely tipped for re-election. Few analysts expect he will be forced into a second round.

But opposition figures have cried foul, with three candidates having withdrawn from the race which now leaves Outtara vying against six others. They are likely to be reassured by the vote, which observers said was overwhelmingly free of violence.

“For the moment we are quite satisfied that everything is going ahead without any major incidents”, said Mariam Dao Gabela, chairperson of the Peace-CI civil society elections observer project.

Just under 20,000 polling stations opened at 7.00 a.m. (0700GMT) and are to close at 5.00 p.m.

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Voting started one hour late at the school, and elsewhere, but local election official Kassoume Toure said all materials had been received.

A peaceful election is crucial to reassuring investors who have flooded into the world’s top cocoa grower, drawn by growth rates of around 9 percent over the past three years as other African economies have crumbled due to the commodities crash. The elections commission has introduced new technology, including computer tablets, to verify their identities.

Voter turnout will be critical to legitimising Ouattara’s mandate if he wins as expected.

Roughly 80 percent of registered voters cast ballots in 2010.

The conflict broke out after former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept Mr Ouattara’s victory in the 2010 election. He goes on trial next month for war crimes at the global Criminal Court in The Hague.

By 4:00 pm, only a quarter of voters had turned out at one of Yopougon’s polling stations.

Leaders of a break-away faction of Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) have called for a boycott of the polls, and their strongholds in the west and in certain parts of Abidjan are potential flashpoints for violence. Former Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny pulled out of the vote on Friday, the last day of the election campaign, claiming that there were “grave irregularities” in the election organization.

Turnout in the pro-Gbagbo villages in Gagnoa and in Yopougon are expected to be low.

“I want a lasting peace and work for my children”, said Bintou Coulibaly, a trader casting her ballot in a neighbourhood of the commercial capital, Abidjan. Cocoa farmer Yves Titiro told Reuters, “My president is in prison”. “In the north there will be an election, but it has nothing to do with us here”.