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Côte d'Ivoire

Tight race as Côte d'Ivoire launches presidental campaign

Presidential campaigning has kicked off in Côte d'Ivoire, where three political heavy weights are vying for the country's top office. President Laurent Gbagbo is ahead in polls going into the 31 October contest, but he is closely trailed by fomer President Henri Konan Bedié and former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara.

Reuters
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Everyone's been unofficially campaigning for months, but when the official campaign period was launched at midnight Thursday night, hundreds of Gbagbo supporters were already in the street plastering posters.

Cars and trucks with the posters taped to the side rolled around the streets with young people wearing campaign T-shirts hanging out of the windows.

Yet besides the bright burst of sound and colour, the campaigns themselves are quiet. Of the big three, only Ouattara held a meeting, while Bedie stayed home and Gbagbo visited the western city of Man.

Ouattara laid out his campaign platform at a chic hotel in Abidjan, pledging to decentralise the administration, build hospitals, universities, roads and ports. Things Gbagbo is also promising.

While the tropes of a Western style issue-based campaign are there, the candidates are trying to be everything to everyone, and observers worry that the vote will break down in a typically African fashion - along ethnic lines.
 

 

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