Ouattara’s Dangerous Gambit

In 2019, as speculation grew that he was quietly orchestrating a run for a legally dubious third term of office at the expiration of his tenure the following year, pressure mounted on Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara to show his hand.

When the president eventually spoke, his remarks did little to put his compatriots and international observers at ease. On the one hand, Mr. Ouattara spoke of his conviction “that there is a need for generational change in Africa,” adding: “Seventy-five percent of Africans are under 35 years of age. The French president is 40; my eldest son is 52. It is clear to me that the path is towards a transfer to a new generation.” Yet, lest anyone should surmise that he was going to take his own counsel and bow out gracefully, the president quickly added: “I’m not telling you that I am leaving, be careful.” (He would go on to secure a bitterly contested third term after Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, widely seen as his preferred successor, died unexpectedly in July 2020.)

Mr. Ouattara, eighty-three this year, is back waffling. Last week, at an official event in Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital, he teased the idea of running for a seemingly improbable fourth presidential term (“I’m in good health and eager to serve my country”) so far as his party, the ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), was ready to back his candidacy. However, in typical Ouattara-ese, he seemed to hedge his bets when he added: “As of today, I have not yet made a decision.”

Given Mr. Ouattara’s history, this is as lucid a declaration of intent to run as one can wish for, and early indications are that he enjoys the full backing of party stalwarts. Last October, top party officials anointed Mr. Ouattara their “natural candidate” and expressed a “desire to do everything possible” to ensure his victory in next October’s presidential election.

While the opposition will have its say (its principled boycott of the 2020 presidential election may have been one reason the president was able to rack up 94 percent of the vote), it appears that the West African country of 32 million people is set for a rerun of an all too familiar political melodrama in which the incumbent feigns a lack of interest in staying in power but is seemingly pressured by party bigwigs and assorted lackeys to act against his personal interest, terminating in a denouement in which the “father of the nation” reluctantly accepts to carry on for the good of the country. In the meantime, the political opposition is portrayed as “enemies of state,” and its (the state’s) resources are promptly mobilized against it and anyone who dares cry foul.

To say that President Ouattara’s shillyshallying is the last thing that Côte d’Ivoire needs is an understatement. In the first place, the fact that previous electoral contests have been dogged by violence means that the country has little margin for error and can nary afford a potentially combustible situation in which the opposition is pushed to the wall and feels the need to do everything to stand up to what it legitimately sees as an assault on the country’s constitution. Three thousand people were needlessly killed and another five hundred thousand displaced after then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat in the November 2010 presidential poll. It is regrettable that Mr. Ouattara, at the time the clear winner that the incumbent was reluctant to hand over to, has learnt very little from the tragic episode.

Furthermore, President Ouattara either appears not to have read the room as far as the ascendant mood across the region is concerned, or he seems to have quickly forgotten what happened in Senegal where former President Macky Sall’s attempt to continue in power for an illegal third term of office spectacularly blew up in his face. Either way, he seems not to mind plunging his country into an avoidable political crisis, the ripples of which will in all probability be felt beyond its borders.

There is no other name for what President Ouattara is doing than reckless, and it is absolutely important that he be stopped in his tracks. The regional political and economic body, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has a role to play here. Having acted admirably in standing up to the martial trinity of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, it needs to stay the course by speaking clearly in condemnation of President Ouattara’s plans, for in essence, what the soldiers have done with guns is the same thing Mr. Ouattara is aiming to accomplish through the ballot. ECOWAS will look foolish and be susceptible to accusations of double standard if it does not take a stand against Mr. Ouattara.

Washington too can weigh in. It seems plausible that President Ouattara is figuring that, with the United States desperate for new alliances across the region, and with the incoming Trump administration expected to be distracted at worst and transactional at best, there is hardly a better time to get away with a political heist of this magnitude. Washington should send a clear message that the United States will not stand with an ally who is willing to sacrifice the well-being of his people and the stability of his country on the altar of political ambition.

Mr. Ouattara says he is “eager to continue serving” his country. Very well. There is no law that says he can only do this as president. The moral and reasonable thing to do is to leave office at the expiration of his current term and let the political process take its course. The high ground beckons. President Ouattara should take it.