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Ivory Coast
Index
The teachers' strike quickly expanded into a major
political
issue at a time when underlying popular discontent had
already come
close to the surface. Shortly before the strike, the
president had
announced an expensive move of the capital from Abidjan to
his
village birthplace, Yamoussoukro. The move promised to
increase
vastly the value of land in the region, much of which was
owned by
the president and his family. And then, after the strike,
Houphouët-Boigny delivered an extraordinary speech to the
PDCI's
Political Bureau in which he divulged the sources and use
of his
own extensive wealth. The consequent publication of the
speech
surprised much of the population, many of whom had been
adversely
affected by the country's increasing economic
difficulties, and
aroused tremendous popular disapproval.
In 1984, despite record harvests and prices for cash
crops and
a rescheduling of the external debt, the political
atmosphere
remained glum. Public investigations revealed high levels
of
corruption in the public housing sector and led to a
protracted
trial and the subsequent imprisonment of a number of
high-ranking
officials. More important, the trial implicated higher
authorities,
including past and present ministers and members of the
president's
family, none of whom was brought to justice.
Popular discontent also increased in response to the
president's implementation of austerity measures. In the
public
sector, the government froze salaries. Throughout 1984 the
employees retaliated by threatening strikes, work
stoppages, and
absenteeism. In the private sector, where politicians who
were also
business people had always enjoyed privileged treatment,
financial
irregularities were usually ignored. But the austerity
measures
took aim at the business people, eliminating their
privileges and
exposing financial scandals. For example, Emmanuel Dioulo,
Abidjan's mayor, reportedly defrauded the National
Agricultural
Development Bank of US$32 million. At the end of March
1985, when
the PDCI's Executive Committee lifted Dioulo's
parliamentary
immunity so that he could be tried on criminal charges,
Dioulo fled
the country. Following the Dioulo affair, Houphouët-Boigny
launched
a series of tax investigations of Yacé and other prominent
political figures who had acquired personal fortunes.
During Houphouët-Boigny's 1984 annual summer vacation
in
Europe, a number of political tracts, published by
unidentified
opposition groups, appeared in the capital. The tracts
questioned
the president's political views and denounced the failure
of the
PDCI to manage the economy. The PDCI leadership responded
to the
attacks by organizing a series of trips to the interior to
speak
personally to the population. This measure, however, only
created
more tension because the leaders competed among themselves
for
coverage in the national media and exposed their sometimes
bitter
rivalry. One reason for the increasing intensity of the
rivalry was
the scheduled September 1985 Eighth Party Congress of the
PDCI, to
be followed by legislative and presidential elections.
In addition to the succession issue and the economic
crisis,
urban populations were faced with a worsening crime wave
for which
Ivoirians blamed foreigners primarily from Ghana and
Burkina Faso
(see Crime and Punishment
, ch. 5). Some gangs, however,
were
directed by the Ivoirian underworld, an organized crime
group that
sometimes recruited unemployed youths from Upper Volta.
Many of the
attacks were aimed at affluent French and Lebanese
business people.
Thus, by the end of 1984, uncertainty and instability
permeated
the Ivoirian political and economic sectors, replacing the
growth
and optimism of a decade earlier. The most pressing issue,
however,
as viewed by the Ivoirian political elite and Western
governments
(France in particular), was whether Houphouët-Boigny would
designate an official successor for the 1985 elections.
The
Ivoirian elite seemed committed to a stable transition of
power,
mostly to protect their economic interests. Clearly, many
Ivoirian
politicians believed that this designation would eliminate
much of
the then-pervasive popular discontent.
* *
*
Detailed written accounts of Côte d'Ivoire's early
history
simply are not available because the archaeological record
has yet
to be fully explored. There do exist numerous
transcriptions of
oral accounts, with their limitations in reassembling the
historical record, by ancestors of the indigenous
population. Two
secondary sources that include sections on the early
history of the
region are Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff's
French West
Africa and Robert W. July's A History of the
African
People.
More recent literature on Côte d'Ivoire is copious and
varied.
Aristide R. Zolberg's One-Party Government in the Ivory
Coast is
the best known and most detailed source for an analysis of
recent
Ivoirian politics, and Michael A. Cohen's Urban Policy
and
Political Conflict in Africa is an excellent source
for a
discussion of the country's contrasting urban and rural
life. Other
analytical studies of Ivoirian politics, both precolonial
and
postcolonial, include Christian Potholm's chapter in
Four
African Political Systems titled "The Ivoirian
Political
System"; two articles by Bonnie Campbell, one in John
Dunn's
West African States titled "The Ivory Coast"; and
the other
in Paul M. Lubeck's The African Bourgeoisie titled
"The
State and Capitalist Development in the Ivory Coast;" and
an
article by Martin Staniland titled "Single-Party Regimes
and
Political Change: The P.D.C.I. and Ivory Coast Politics."
Literature that deals extensively with the nature and
extent of
Houphouët-Boigny's personal power is found in Claude
Welch's No
Farewell to Arms? and Robert H. Jackson and Carl G.
Rosberg's
Personal Rule in Black Africa. One other article of
note,
which deals in great depth with the Ivoirian succession
issue, is
Tessilimi Bakary's "Elite Transformation and Political
Succession"
in I. William Zartman and Christopher Delgado's The
Political
Economy of Ivory Coast.
One of the best sources for a critical assessment of
HouphouëtBoigny is Laurent Gbagbo, a government opponent, whose
book,
Côte d'Ivoire: Economie et société à la veille de
l'Indépendance
(1940-1960), examines the events and conditions that
brought
Houphouët-Boigny to power. (For further information and
complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1988
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