Ivory Coast: Where the president won’t budge

Since the decisive round of the elections in Cote d’Ivoire, the state is still waiting for the stepping down of Laurent Gbagbo. This is the president who claims he won the elections when the international community, starting with the UN peacekeeping force within the territory, claims quite unanimously that he lost them. His opponent, Alassane Ouattara, who is believed to be the official winner of the elections, and thus, the new president of Cote d’Ivoire, is however still held in the biggest hotel of the capital, surrounded by the armed forces of Laurent Gbagbo and the UN peacekeeping troops, whose mission is, theoretically, to protect any civilian whose life would be put into lethal danger.

We might then assume that they are not just supporting Mr. Ouattara for being the multilaterally recognised president. As the situation seems to be very tense, governments have started taking part by supporting Ouattara, and the presidents of most of the neighbouring countries have visited Gbagbo in the hope of convincing him to step down. But this has proven, despite the many ultimatums imposed by Ouattara, to be a very complex task to achieve.

The old man will not budge from the throne, and his support, mostly situated in the south of Cote d’Ivoire, must not be neglected.

But whatever the true results of the elections, that the UN claims to have, the media without explicitly supporting Ouattara has generally painted a very polarised situation in which Gbagbo is the foe and Ouattara is the friend.

The fact that the UN peacekeeping troops are there should not be a concern of illegitimate intervention, if they are actually following their official guidelines. But the fact that governments, such as France’s, give ultimatums to Gbagbo without clearly stating what would be the result in case he was to disrespect this deadline, and the media to take part, in a biased way, in this situation, is a problem. And the biggest misconception created by the media that, too often, hastily describe political situations to make it seem clearer, is that it provides and nourishes western populations with a binary view of the situation, which can only lead to impreciseness and flawed appreciations.

This has to be something religiously or culturally based, for Christianity seems to be keen on the binary model of the good and the bad, the angel and the demon, God and Lucifer.

This is exactly what one of the many problems was in the Bush Jr. administration: fed with tales from the world of Walt Disney where Snow White can only be a viable story if a witch is in the plot. Seeing amongst the world either friends or foes covers up stories that would make a situation clearer and a conflict more understandable.

If Gbagbo is refusing to step down, clearly it is a democratic problem and the media are right in denouncing that. But the media cannot only blame or try to find ways to blame only one side without putting as much effort into trying to find ways to blame the other side, if that is the purpose.

A recent report has shown that Mr. Ouattara might have rigged the elections as well. Maybe not to the extent that Gbagbo still refuses to admit, but that should still be known. What the media in general could do better about that specific case of Cote d’Ivoire, is spreading the information that Mr. Ouattara cannot be categorised as white as snow just because he is against the bad guy in this story.