By Aloysius AGENDIA
Early November 2010, Ivoirians went to the polls to elect a new president. After the first round of elections, no candidate could get the absolute majority needed to avoid a runoff. Incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo of LMP scored 38 percent of the votes while former Prime Minister Alasane Ouatara of PDR and former President Henri Konan Bedie got 32 and 25 percent respectively. The second round on November 28, 2010 pitted Ouatara against Gbagbo. Konan Bedie urged his supporters to rally behind Ouatara. Analysts considered the call a marriage against nature because; it was the same Konan Bedie who made claims in the late 1990s and early 2000 that Ouatara was not an Ivoirian but actually a Burkinabe. That was the beginning of rivalry in Cote D Ivoire. From that perspective, it is hard to say with certainty if the supporters of Bedie could actually vote for Ouatara or massively vote for someone whom for years they consider more of their enemy than Laurent Gbagbo.