Provisional election results out of Cote d’Ivoire indicate incumbent President Alassane Ouattara won reelection.
Election commission president Ibrahime Coulibaly-Kuibiert said in an early morning broadcast Ouattara won 94 percent of the vote. 54 percent of Ivorians cast ballots.
The landslide result had been widely expected after two leading opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election.
Hours before the results, the opposition said they would create a transitional government, insisting Ouattara’s mandate was over as he had broken the country’s two-term presidential limit.
Ouattara, a former IMF economist first elected in 2010, says a 2016 reform allowed him to run again.
The tension over Cote D’Ivoire’s election is another test for a region where nearby Guinea is mired in a post-election dispute of its own. Nigeria is emerging from widespread unrest and Mali has faced a coup.
The Ivorian leader is praised by supporters for bringing infrastructure projects and economic growth after a decade of instability in the world’s top cocoa producer.
But the anger sparked by his third term has revived memories of past Ivorian feuds that were left mostly unreconciled after a divisive 2002 civil war.
Story compiled with assistance from AFP and wire reports.
