Ivory Coast Referendum Approves New Constitution Amid Questions of Legitimacy
On October 30, citizens of Ivory Coast approved a new constitution in a referendum with a 93.42 percent vote. Most significantly the new constitution removes the controversial stipulation that both parents of presidential candidates must be native-born Ivoirians, creating a Senate and a position of vice president, and eliminates the presidential age limit of 75. President Ouattara, age 74, insists these will guarantee more political stability. former President Bédié inaugurated the ancestry clause as a legal amendment in an effort to exclude Ouattara, whose ancestral history straddled the border between Ivory Coast and its northern neighbor Burkina-Faso, from eligibility and to ensure his own incumbency. It was later codified in Article 35 of the 2000 constitution, and promulgated by General Guéï, who rose to power through a bloodless military coup in 1999.
The exclusionary concept of ivoirité, stressing the primacy of ethnic indigeneity, thus became embedded in national consciousness. Moreover, it was reinforced through tensions between Ivoirians and residents of Burkinabé ancestry. This identity issue culminated in a protracted civil war that started in 2002, which killed thousands under President Gbagbo, currently facing charges at the International Criminal Court.
Despite the fact that the Linas-Marcoussis Accord from 2003 stipulates that signatories revise but not replace the statute in question, President Ouattara appointed a committee in May to redraft the constitution. Opposition parties such as the Ivoirian Popular Front (FPI) party accuse President Ouattara of emulating the Gaullist model of constitutional reform, treating it as an elite project rather than an opportunity for dialogue and consensus. Opposition leaders, who have called the new constitution “treacherous” and “undemocratic, illegal and illegitimate,” called for boycotts of the referendum in response to this lack of transparency and the truncated turnaround time since the 184-article constitution’s first presentation in September.
The referendum drew a low turnout rate of 42.41 percent and witnessed violence at 100 polling sites across the country. Violence stemmed from the opposition party’s accusations that the new constitution is an elite scheme to augment executive power through a patronage-based Senate and a step to guarantee citizenship rights to Ivoirians of mixed descent in the future.