Скачать или смотреть IVORY COAST: ELECTIONS: POLLS OPEN WRAP

(10 Dec 2000) French/Nat

Voting opened slowly on Sunday in legislative elections in Ivory Coast, where an opposition boycott and fears of violence kept many people at home.

In some cities in the opposition-dominated north, voting had not begun by early afternoon, officials said, and it was unclear whether the elections would occur at all in some towns in the region.

The wife of President Laurent Gbagbo was one of the first to vote in the coastal city of Abidjan, the nation's commercial capital.

She was followed later by her husband, surrounded by bodyguards.

Lines were short in most of the city's neighbourhoods by midday and often non-existent in strongholds of the opposition Rally of the Republicans, whose leader, Alassane Dramane Ouattara, was excluded from the vote by the Supreme Court.

The court ruled he was ineligible because of doubts about his nationality.

Ouattara insists both he and his parents are Ivorian.

Overnight, party militants had clashed with paramilitary police in the working class suburb of Abobo, an enclave of Rally supporters, leaving four people injured

Ivory Coast, once renowned in the region for its calm and prosperity, has been wracked by turmoil since the military seized power nearly a year ago in a coup.

Bloody street violence, sparked by Ouattara's exclusion, shook Abidjan just a few days ago, leaving at least 20 people dead in clashes.

While outwardly political, the problems reflects deeper ethnic, religious and geographic divides.

Ouattara's support comes mainly from ethnic groups in Ivory Coast's largely Muslim north while Gbagbo's government is mostly composed of southern Christians.

Ouattara also has broad support among Ivory Coast's large immigrant community - which some estimates put as high as 40 percent of the population - many of them from Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea.

SOUNDBITE: (French)
"After the Presidential elections, these Parliamentary elections are the next stage in our institutional reforms."
SUPER CAPTION: Laurent Gbagbo, President of Ivory Coast

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