Ouattara calls for storming of Ivorian state TV
ABIDJAN — Ivory Coast was braced for trouble Wednesday after one of the fragile West African state's two declared presidents called on his supporters to march on state television and the seat of government.
Both Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo claim to have won last month's election, and both have declared themselves president, provoking fears of new chaos in a country already divided into northern and southern armed camps.
Ouattara won the recognition of the international community but is running out of time to assert his rule, with Gbagbo defiantly hanging on to control of the military, ministries and cocoa ports that are the key levers of state.
After two weeks of stalemate and increasingly hardline rhetoric from both sides, Ouattara and his would-be prime minister, former rebel leader Guillaume Soro, have called on their supporters to seize RTI television on Thursday.
In the pro-Ouattara district of Abobo, tension was running high Wednesday as police and army reinforcements deployed around government buildings and his partisans declared their determination to take power in the streets.
"The mobilisation will be total," predicted 50-year-old Bakary Kone. "We wanted to head to RTI to sleep there tonight, but we're waiting for word from our prime minister. If we lose faith now, Gbagbo will be there forever."
In a small way, the district's rebellion against state media had already begun. A town crier with a megaphone was reading out newspaper headlines in Malinke, one of the languages of Ouattara's northern heartland.
Another local man, 53-year-old Tra Bi Toh, declared that his son and the "entire population" was ready to storm RTI, which has become a propaganda mouthpiece of the Gbagbo government and his generals and ministers.
The pro-Outtara daily Le Patriote declared across its front page: "Thursday: D-Day. Everyone in the street to liberate RTI." Gbagbo's paper, "Notre Voie", accused the United Nations of arming northern rebel fighters.
If the Ouattara camp manages to take the television station on Thursday, it has vowed to move on to take the prime minister's office in the well-defended Plateau district of downtown Abidjan on Friday.
Gbagbo's government has said it will resist, and on Wednesday one of his most notorious supporters, Minister for Youth Charles Ble Goude, mobilised 2,000 of his partisans for a rally in a pro-Ouattara suburb of Abidjan.
In 2006, Ble Goude was placed under United Nations sanctions for his role in organising and leading mob violence in the streets of Abidjan during a previous political crisis in 2004, but he has since moderated his rhetoric.
Ble Goude is best known as an anti-French, anti-northern rabble-rouser, but he insisted Tuesday on RTI that he is not now following "a bellicose logic".
His supporters met in a cultural centre in Treichville and were awaiting their leader, the one-time head of the "Young Patriots" movement.
In 2004, Young Patriots also targeted French interests, and Paris' decision to recognise Ouattara as election victor has inspired a new wave of anti-French feeling in what was once the jewel of its West African colonies.
In Paris, Defence Minister Alain Juppe said France "of course has no intention to intervene militarily", saying the 900 French troops in Ivory Coast could be sued to help evacuate its 15,000 citizens there in case of crisis.
The European Union also demanded Gbagbo respect Ouattara's election, and officials have drawn up a list of his supporters to be hit with sanctions.
Those facing travel bans and asset freezes include Gbagbo's senior security adviser Kadet Berlin, his office chief of staff Desire Tagro and the head of the Constitutional Council which named him victor, Yao N'Dre.
Also listed are senior military officers, the head of Gbagbo's party, the director of state broadcasting and the bodyguard to Gbagbo's wife Simone.
Ouattara's shadow government is holed up in a luxury hotel on a golf course in the plush Abidjan suburb of Cocody, protected by UN peacekeepers and former rebel fighters from Soro's northern "New Forces".
While he is popular in the mainly Muslim north, in the southern commercial capital he is seen as outgunned by Gbagbo's regular forces, in particular the feared Republican Guard and the well-armed Cecos anti-robbery squad.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved
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