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Ivory Coast
Index
After the alleged coup attempts in 1962 and 1963,
HouphouëtBoigny disarmed, disbanded, and reorganized the army; took
over the
defense and interior portfolios; formed a party militia
composed
predominantly of ethnic Baoulé kinsmen to maintain order
in
Abidjan; overhauled the State Security Court; and, for his
personal
protection, established a Presidential Guard separate from
the
army. Nevertheless, Houphouët-Boigny considered the army
to be the
cornerstone of Ivoirian internal security.
Following the 1973 alleged coup attempt in Côte
d'Ivoire and
the April 1974 military coup in Niger that ousted
President Hamani
Diori, a lifelong friend and regional political ally,
HouphouëtBoigny ceded a larger political role to the armed forces
to give
them a formal stake in the regime. In June 1974, he
removed the
French commander of the FACI and the French commandant of
the
military academy at Bingerville, replacing them with
Ivoirian
officers. A month later, he brought military officers into
the
cabinet for the first time. Houphoüet-Boigny also promoted
several
senior army officers and appointed ten officers as
prefects.
At same time, the new minister of interior, Mathieu
Ekra,
undertook organizational reforms and made new appointments
in the
territorial administration and police forces. By the end
of 1974,
a new ethnic balance had emerged among the security
forces.
Northerners controlled higher positions in the army; the
demographically preponderant Baoulé dominated the National
Security
Police; and southerners were a plurality in the police and
National
Gendarmerie.
In the 1980s, as political upheavals became more
frequent,
Houphouët-Boigny repeatedly changed his government. In
February
1981, in the wake of the 1980 coup and assassination
attempts, he
enlarged the cabinet from twenty-five to thirty-six
ministers,
bringing in Banny as minister of defense and Leon Konan
Koffi, who
had a reputation for being tough, as minister of interior.
(Ironically, Banny had been the minister of defense who
was
arrested and sentenced to death for his role in the 1963
coup plot
but later given presidential amnesty. Kouadio M'Bahia Blé,
who
replaced Banny after the 1963 incident, kept that post
until Banny
took it back from him in 1981.) In late 1985, several
senior
military officers were appointed to leadership posts in
the
Democratic Party of Côte d'Ivoire (Parti Démocratique de
Côte
d'Ivoire--PDCI), furthering the process of political
co-optation
that began in the mid-1970s.
Several other groups, including political exiles, labor
unions,
teachers, and university students, at times posed a threat
to civil
order; however, none of these groups was likely to topple
the
government
(see Interest Groups
, ch. 4). Secondary-school
teachers
in particular became especially outspoken during the
mid-1980s. In
April 1983, the National Union of Secondary School
Teachers of Côte
d'Ivoire (Syndicat National des Enseignants du Secondaire
de Côte
d'Ivoire--SYNESCI) staged a two-week strike to protest an
80
percent reduction in the teachers' housing allowance. The
government responded by threatening to conscript union
leaders,
dissolve the union, expel teachers from their houses, and
close all
secondary schools. In July 1987, SYNESCI's leaders (who
had also
called the 1983 strike) were ousted by a progovernment
faction
during irregular rump proceedings of the union's congress,
while
uniformed police and plainclothes officers surrounded the
union
headquarters. The new union officials immediately pledged
their
loyalty to the government and charged their predecessors
with
misappropriation of union property and funds. Thirteen of
the
ousted unionists were arrested, and in late October the
eleven
males were sent to the army base in Séguéla. According to
Minister
of Education Balla Keita (who had taken over the newly
consolidated
ministry in the midst of the 1983 SYNESCI strike with
instructions
to break it), the detainees were "well-known agents of
international subversion" who had been "sent to the army
for
national service and civic and moral education in the
supreme
interest of the country." Significantly, SYNESCI--which
was one of
the last unions independent of the government--appeared
finally to
have fallen under government influence.
University students have also been a continuing source
of
antigovernment protest, much to the chagrin of a
government that
has invested up to 40 percent of the national budget in
education.
In 1969 police and soldiers occupied and closed the
University of
Abidjan (present-day National University of Côte
d'Ivoire),
arrested dozens of students, and detained them at Akouédo
after
they protested the government's attempt to place their
newly formed
Movement of Ivoirian Primary and Secondary School Students
(Mouvement des Etudiants et des Elèves de Côte
d'Ivoire--MEECI)
under the PDCI. In February 1982, the government again
closed the
university after both students and faculty protested the
government's banning of Professor Laurent Gbagbo's speech
on
political freedom. In 1985 police broke up a violent
demonstration
by students protesting wholesale reduction in scholarship
aid.
Alien migrant labor also represented a potential
security
threat. Côte d'Ivoire's relatively robust economy made the
country
a magnet for migrant labor. In 1988 at least 2 million
foreign
Africans in the country--about half of them
Burkinabé--(residents
of Burkina Faso) comprised about one-fifth, and perhaps
much more,
of the population of Côte d'Ivoire. Most aliens were
agricultural
laborers or unemployed urban squatters, politically
helpless and
economically deprived migrants who turned to crime.
Foreigners who were more industrious often became
scapegoats
for the wrath of hard-strapped Ivoirians, who saw these
outsiders
taking jobs that they themselves had allegedly been
denied. In
April 1980, for example, hundreds of Mauritanians were
taken under
protective custody, and some 1,500 others took refuge in
the
Mauritanian embassy in Abidjan after days of rioting and
fighting
with Ivoirians. More serious incidents directed against
Burkinabé
occurred during xenophobic riots in 1985, leading Burkina
Faso to
recall its ambassador from Abidjan.
Data as of November 1988
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