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Ivory Coast
Index
Student radicalism has had a long history in
francophone
Africa. It originated in post-World War II France, where
most
students from the colonies studied. Students favored
independence
long before Houphouët-Boigny and the PDCI lobbied for it,
and
neither the president nor the party escaped student
criticism. In
1988 students were generally concerned with scholarships,
student
aid, and housing, although they were also the most
outspoken group
in the nation on the issues of succession,
Ivoirianization, and
one-party democracy.
The PDCI sought to control student dissent by
co-optation or
outright repression. It placed the Movement of Primary and
Secondary School Students of Côte d'Ivoire (Mouvement des
Etudiants
et Elèves de Côte d'Ivoire--MEECI), the official student
organization, under the umbrella of the PDCI, and, when
necessary,
the government impressed student leaders into the army.
Typically,
however, the government followed repression with clemency,
and then
sought to co-opt student leaders. In 1988 four former
MEECI
presidents were members of the PDCI Executive Committee.
In the 1980s, Laurent Gbagbo gained recognition as the
intellectual leader of an incipient movement seeking a
more open
political system. A historian living in exile, Gbagbo was
Côte
d'Ivoire's most well known opposition figure. In two
books, which
were banned in Côte d'Ivoire, Gbagbo attacked the PDCI
regime as
conspiratorial, opportunistic, and corrupt. He was
involved in
disturbances at the National University of Côte d'Ivoire
(formerly
the University of Abidjan) in 1982, after which he fled to
Paris.
There he founded an opposition party, the Ivoirian
People's Front
(Front Populaire Ivoirian--FPI), which called for a
multiparty
democracy. Although the FPI had no formal membership, it
gained a
small following in Abidjan among students, intellectuals,
civil
servants, and some unions.
Data as of November 1988
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