In Ivory Coast, the Civil Society Consortium for Elections was launched earlier this week in Abidjan. It brings together six organizations, including the NGO Indigo and the Association of Women Lawyers. This consortium will observe the entire electoral process of the municipal and regional elections on September 2nd—a way for civil society to participate in the transparency and credibility of elections.
The first point of attention is the publication of the electoral list, which the Independent Electoral Commission is currently updating.
According to Drissa Soulama, the coordinator of FOSCAO, the West African Civil Society Forum, the goal is to take a scientific look at this process: “We will analyze to see the people on the electoral list, he said. Have we not registered people who do not have the right to be registered on the electoral list? Since to be able to vote in Ivory Coast, you must be at least 18 years old. Aren’t there people aged 15 or 12 who are on the electoral list? We will also analyze the question of duplicates. Apart from that, we will also look at the participation of women, for example. We will also analyze it in the different constituencies and the different departments.”
Election day observers
Observers will then be deployed inside the country to follow the period of disputes concerning the publication of the electoral list. On September 2nd, the day of the vote, they will observe the ballot in several cities of the country. “We are therefore going to make PVT, an observation which is based on a representative sample of polling stations on which data will go back to follow a little the levels of political participation, to follow a little the progress of the ballot, precisely to give all the pledges that there was a vote which is sincere and credible, and which reflects the vivacity of democracy in Ivory Coast”, explains Doctor Séverin Kouamé, coordinator of the NGO Indigo.