Brussels, 27/01/2011 (Agence Europe) - The EU will not be budged and is signing: Alassane Ouattara is the exclusive winner of the presidential elections on 28 November in Côte d'Ivoire, no matter what Laurent Gbagbo (who is clinging on to power) and his supporters say. The final report by the EU electoral mission is definitive. According to Cristian Dan Preda (EPP, Romania), the head observer, who presented this report on 25 January in Brussels during a joint meeting of the European Parliament's development and foreign affairs committees, the election result is “correct”, the results are “credible” and do not require any vote recount at all.
Preda said that 95% of voting stations had operated appropriately and “although there had been certain irregularities and a few incidents in a couple of places, the assessment of the election and subsequent conclusion is that the elections took place in the right conditions”. He added that “the election is correct. The results announced are credible. The certification process (by the UN) corresponds to what we were able to see on the ground. The decision by the Constitutional Council is an infringement of Côte d'Ivoire law, indeed it is an excess of power because the law does not allow it to annul any part of the results”. The Constitutional Council amended the results by cancelling the votes for one of the competing candidates (15% of votes) without any “reason for an investigation or identification of fraud” and was due entirely to its wish to “deny” the real result. Given that the difference between the results proclaimed by the independent electoral committee is 400,000 votes (54% as opposed to 46%), “I would say that a recount is totally unnecessary”, explained Preda, who suggested that the problem is related to “the election campaign management by one of the competitors. The only one who does not want to accept it is the Constitutional Council, at the behest of Gbagbo..
For the future, the final report recommends that the nomination of Constitutional Council members be subject to a vote by the National Assembly, which would make the participation of former presidents in Council debates compulsory. It would also help strengthen the independence of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), consolidate the electoral code in the long-term and clarify the way in which voters are identified. Preda pointed out that 120 European observers (from the EU, Norway and Switzerland) attended 5% of the 20,000 voting stations. This percentage is above the 3% used to compile reliable statistical samples. Ultimately, “all observers (Ed: and not only European observers) declared that there had not been any major irregularities. I believe that nothing significant was noticed by our observers”. Preda regretted that the final report, which should have been communicated to the Côte d'Ivoire authorities in Abidjan, had to be presented to Brussels, “due to the security problems and confused situation”. (A.N./transl.fl)