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Ivory Coast: Ouattara poised to win big in the wake of rapid economic growth
Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said on Monday he would push for constitutional reform if he his re-elected this week to scrap a nationality clause that helped drag his West African nation into a decade-long political crisis.
Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, has long been a magnet for immigrants from neighboring countries. Ivorian nationality became a burning political issue at the heart of a 2002-2003 civil war that divided the country in two for 8 years.
Ouattara himself was barred from seeking the presidency over what opponents said were his foreign origins before finally winning election in 2010.
Heavily favored to win a second term in a presidential election on Sunday thanks to a thriving economy, Ouattara told reporters he was determined to remove the nationalist bias from the constitution.
The current document, ratified in 2000, says presidential candidates must prove both their parents are Ivorians who were born on Ivorian soil. They must also have never claimed the citizenship of another country. It became a symbol for exclusion for northerners, whose family ties often cross into Burkina Faso and Mali.
“We will have a new constitution because I think the current constitution is outdated. It was written during the crisis of 2000. It has too many things which are complicated,” Ouattara said in an interview in the commercial capital Abidjan.
If re-elected, this will be Ouattara’s second and final term.
“By the end of my second term I will be 78, so there’s no real reason for me to try to continue. I’ve worked long enough,” he said.
While Ouattara has long maintained he qualified to run under the existing constitution, the constitutional court blocked his candidacy for a 2000 poll won by ex-president Laurent Gbagbo.
Any reform of the constitution would require backing from parliament, and then need to be submitted to a referendum.
