Ouattara re-elected as Ivory Coast President; took 84% of the vote

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara about casting

his ballot in Cocody, a district of Abidjan

Alassane Ouattara was re-elected as president of Ivory Coast, official results showed on Wednesday, in a vote seen as key to cementing peace in the West African country after years of violence and upheaval.

The 73-year-old incumbent won the election outright by garnering almost 84% of ballots in the first round of polls Sunday, which saw 54.63% of voters turn out despite calls for a boycott by some opposition candidates.

Ouattara, who had been widely tipped to win, has been credited with reviving the country’s war-scarred economy but also accused of creeping authoritarianism.

His main challenger was ex-prime minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan, who garnered just 9.29% of ballots and ran on behalf of the Ivorian Popular Front, the party of former leader Laurent Gbagbo. 

Ouattara unseated Gbagbo in 2010 but the then president refused to concede defeat, sparking a wave of violence, which left around 3,000 people dead. Gbagbo was eventually defeated by pro-Ouattara forces, backed by the UN and France, who dragged him from a bunker under the presidential residence where he had hidden for days. 

He is now awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague for crimes against humanity over atrocities committed in the five-month conflict. Commentators had questioned whether people would head to the polls after the violence, but Ivory Coast’s electoral commission said 54.63% of those eligible had voted. 

The process won praise from observers as being fair and peaceful and the president of the National Electoral Commission, the CEI, said that after the vote, “the crisis of 2010 is behind us”.