Côte d'Ivoire: Compaore calls out Gbagbo and his Premier to respect the Electoral Schedule

Ivory Coast’s President Laurent Gbagbo and his Premier Soro Guillaume failed to respect the schedule set up within the framework of Ouagadougou Political Agreement which should normally pave the way to the presidential election pencilled for June 2008. As time is passing by, clamors become more and more audible.

here is no doubt that the long postponed elections pencilled for June 2008 by the Ouagadougou Agreement will be delayed once more. The main opposition parties, PDCI and RDR, and some political analysts see behind this postponement an unveiled will of the ruling party (FPI) to organize electoral fraud and stay in power for a new term of office. This troublesome situation is still fuelling political debates in the headquarters of political parties.

The facilitator of Ouagadougou Agreement, Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaore, urges his Ivory Coast counterpart Laurent Gbagbo and the Ivorian Premier, Soro Guillaume to collaborate on the terms of Ouagadougou Agreement and respect the schedule and the deadline set up by the same Agreement. In a speech delivered on Friday 21^st March 2008, at the opening of the 4^th Session of the Supervising Committee of Ouagadougou Agreement, the facilitator said: “I call out all the actors of the identification and the electoral processes to strengthen their collaboration in order to respect the schedule and the deadline set up by Ouagadougou Agreement for each step of these processes”. Addressing President Gbagbo and his Premier, Compaore call them to respect their commitment to organize the presidential elections normally due to June 2008. He added that the coming month (April 2008) will determine if the schedule will be extend or not and that penalty charges will be applied to all those who thwart the implementation of the Ouagadougou Agreement and do not respect the schedule proposed by this Agreement.

Selay M.K.