By Kingsley Kobo, AfricaNews
ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST, 1 December 2010: Ivory Coast incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo’s ruling LMP party is contesting partial results from Sunday’s second round presidential elections that challenged him to former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara, who is ahead in the partial results released by the election commission (CEI) on Tuesday.
The LMP chairman Affi N’Guessan held a press conference in Abidjan on Tuesday to denounce “vast irregularities, molestation of party representatives and stuff of ballot boxes” in the rebel-held north of the West African country, where Ouattara had his highest scores in the first round.
N’Guessan called on the CEI to “simply annul” results from the disputed regions.
But the representative of the UN Secretary General in Ivory Coast, the European Union election monitors, as well as those from the African Union, who all observed the vote, said it was “globally satisfactory, peaceful, free and fair, despite some minor and isolated irregularities.”
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Opposition bloc RHDP spokesperson Mabri Touakeuse told Reuters that President Gbagbo had lost the election but didn’t want to step down hence he was hindering the CEI from releasing the results.
In a statement released Tuesday the rebel forces, FAFN said “The ruling LMP party is making up excuses not to step down from power. Nothing so terrible in our zone that calls from the annulment of results took place.”
The CEI says it will release provisional results by midday on Wednesday, which will be confirmed later by the constitutional council.
AfricaNews correspondent in Ivory Coast, Kingsley Kobo, reports that the situation is still very diasy and that the results could be announced later today.
“People are running indoors, the electricity and internet going off, heavily armed soldiers parading the streets,” he reported.
