by TOM ROWE
The end of Félix Houphouët-Boigny’s reign destabilised Ivory Coast. In the first multi-party elections after his death in 1993 his successor, President Aimé Henri Konan Bédié, deliberately provoked ethnic tensions to exclude his Muslim rival, Alassane Ouattara, from the north, from running for election on the basis that his parents were not Ivorian. This policy of Ivoirité was extended to voters, many of whom did not have identification to prove their Ivorian roots, and were disenfranchised.
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