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Ivory Coast
Index
The academic community was the most vocal protest
group. The
first sign of difficulty occurred in 1982, when the union
of
students went on strike to protest government efforts to
halt
political speeches on the National University of Côte
d'Ivoire
campus. Houphouët-Boigny responded in his typical
paternalistic
fashion: he chastised the students, dissolved their
movement, and
forced them to return to their villages until they all had
apologized in writing to the government. Laurent Gbagbo, a
young
professor who during the strike spoke out on the need for
a
multiparty system, went into voluntary exile in France and
became
a symbol for young Ivoirians who wanted to liberalize the
ruling
party.
Further disturbances occurred in 1983, when
approximately 4,000
secondary-school teachers, members of the National Union
of
Secondary School Teachers of Côte d'Ivoire (Syndicat
National des
Enseignants du Secondaires de Côte d'Ivoire--SYNESCI),
went on
strike to protest the elimination of their housing
allowances.
Their strike was also an expression of solidarity with
those
students and professors who had protested over issues of
free
speech the year before and, more significant, had voiced
their
basic opposition to Houphouët-Boigny. Because the
teachers' union
was the only union independent of the PDCI (SYNESCI
refused to
affiliate with the official government union), the
government
dissolved the union during the strike. In addition, the
teachers
complained that Houphouët-Boigny had unfairly penalized
them and
ignored cabinet members who, they alleged, had mismanaged
the
economy. Reacting once again in an arbitrary manner that
further
alienated teachers and students alike, Houphouët-Boigny
closed all
the secondary schools and sent the 200,000 students home.
Data as of November 1988
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