I.Coast leader celebrates crushing election triumph

File - AFP

Abidjan, Ivory Coast (AFP) - Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara celebrated Friday as he and his allies secured a vice-like grip on parliament after an election boycotted by followers of his toppled rival Laurent Gbagbo.

After final results were announced in the early hours by the independent electoral commission, Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) said Ouattara was the head of an illegitimate regime and was only in power as a result of force.

Gbagbo is currently awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity. He was captured by pro-Ouattara forces in April, with support from French and UN troops.

But Ouattara's camp said the result meant that the president could now press ahead with his task of rebuilding a country shattered by years of civil war.

The election commission's head Youssouf Bakayoko said on public television that Ouattara's Rally of Republicans (RDR) won 127 of the 254 seats contested, with its main ally, the Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI), getting 77.

A government source said the RDR expected some independent MPs to join the party, giving it an absolute majority of around 129 or 130 seats.

Turnout in the vote last Sunday was 36.56 percent, higher than the last election in 2000, Bakayoko added. But it was well down from the November 2010 presidential election when more than 80 percent voted.

That contest plunged the former French colony, which is the world's number one cocoa producer, into a new round of civil war when Gbagbo refused to accept defeat.

The fighting, which eventually left around 3,000 people dead, only came to an end after Gbagbo's dramatic capture in the presidential palace.

The parliamentary election campaign was marred by five deaths, but the poll itself took place without serious incident.

However following widespread complaints about the presence of uniformed soldiers at rallies, the military prosecutor's office announced Friday that 19 troops had been detained for unauthorized involvement in the election campaign.

Ouattara has vowed to unite the country after a near decade of civil war and his overwhelming majority should help his cause.

Bruno Kone, a spokesman for the Ouattara government, expressed satisfaction at the result, saying it showed that "Ivorians continue to trust the president of the republic and wish to give him the means to fulfill his mission".

"The rebuilding process continues, brick by brick" to ensure that the Ivory Coast can "put an end to the crisis once and for all".

Victory is some kind of revenge

However Gilles Yabi, of the International Crisis Group, urged Ouattara's victorious party to be modest in victory and avoid fanning the flames of a north-south divide.

"The risk is that the RDR is seen more and more as representing some kind of revenge for the north against the south," he told media.

The mainly Muslim north has long been stigmatized.

Gbagbo's FPI boycotted Sunday's poll, citing security concerns and the detention of the former president, whose release it says is a prerequisite for reconciliation.

After the announcement of the results, party spokesman Laurent Akoun again dismissed Ouattara as head of an illegitimate regime.

"This election confirms the illegitimacy of his regime. Without the use of force, he could not have taken power," he argued.

Ivory Coast -- once a beacon of stability in West Africa -- was charged into bloody chaos when Gbagbo refused to accept defeat in last November's presidential poll and clung to power for months.

As the first former head of state to be brought before the ICC, he faces four counts of crimes against humanity including murder, rape and inhuman acts allegedly committed by his troops between December 16, 2010 and April 12.

The ICC is also investigating other figures in the conflict.

Prime Minister and former rebel leader Guillaume Soro, some of whose lieutenants have been charged with crimes, met ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and his successor Fatou Bensouda in New York on Thursday.

With the victory of Ouattara's party confirmed, the next question will be whether Soro -- elected with a Soviet-style score of nearly 99 percent in his hometown of Ferkessedougou -- will retain his post as prime minister.

Soro has said he is ready to face an International Criminal Court trial for political killings if charged.