The West African country which calls itself Côte d’Ivoire and which we know as Ivory Coast finally, it seems, has the president it chose in an election last November. It’s been a long time for Alassane Ouattara, who was recruited more than 20 years ago by the country’s towering figure, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, to clean up the economic mess it had fallen into. The man he defeated was Laurent Gbagbo, who was educated in France, taught university-level history, was a confidant of the French Socialist leader, François Mittérrand, and went back to his homeland as a shining light to challenge Houphouët-Boigny who controlled everything in his country.

That’s about as brief a thumbnail history of Ivory Coast you can get. But that short-changes decades of history, both as a colony of France and then as an independent nation. Just as you cannot talk about Jamaica’s history without calling Norman Manley’s name, we can’t discuss today’s Ivory Coast without mentioning Houphouët-Boigny. A bright young man and the son of a village chief, he had a better education than most colonial subjects at the time. He ended school as a medical assistant, working all over the country.

From the 1940s until his death in 1993, Houphouët-Boigny played a leading role in his country’s politics as well as in ending French colonial rule in Africa. He was among several representatives of the African colonies sent to France as members of the National Assembly, and he served in several ministerial positions in successive French governments. As the European colonial powers painfully rebuilt themselves out of the rubble of World War II, winds of change were blowing throughout the colonial world.

Ghana was the first to go, in 1957, and that country’s leader, Kwame Nkrumah, while on a visit to Ivory Coast, called on all African colonies to declare their independence. Houphouët-Boigny replied that while Nkrumah’s experience was rather impressive, “We considered that it would perhaps be more interesting to try a new and different experience from yours and unique in itself, one of a Franco-African community based on equality and fraternity.” He felt that political independence without economic independence was worthless.

As it turned out, seven members of French West Africa, including Ivory Coast, became autonomous republics within the French Community and full independence came soon after. Houphouët-Boigny became president and forthwith consolidated power in his own hands. He was the only candidate for president and only his party was allowed to run candidates for the national assembly. But he was tremendously popular and his way of dealing with pesky opponents was not to throw them in prison but rather to give them jobs with lots of responsibility.

His politics were moderate and friendly to the West and in particular, France. His system of economic liberalism attracted foreign investors, mainly from France, and quickly built the country into the world’s biggest exporter of cocoa and the third largest exporter of coffee, after Brazil and Colombia. Its other main exports were palm oil and pineapples. This “Ivorian miracle” attracted workers from neighbouring countries, predominantly Burkina Faso, and by 1980 they comprised a quarter of the Ivorian population. But the economic system was far from ideal, as it relied on investment from outside without becoming self-sustaining. Even Houphouët-Boigny lamented that Ivory Coast showed “growth without development”.

The well-regarded president increasingly regarded himself very well, to the point where he had amassed a considerable fortune. He owned property in France, Switzerland and Italy, and lived lavishly. As the 1980s approached, Ivory Coast began experiencing a serious economic decline owing to a collapse in world prices for cocoa and coffee. A series of temporary patches failed to remedy the situation and the result was social and political instability. Despite all this, in 1983 Houphouët-Boigny moved the capital from Abidjan to his home town, the small village of Yamoussoukro, and built at public expense, many buildings and a new international airport. His most extravagant project was the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, the largest church in the world, occupying some 30,000 square metres.

This is where Ouattara came in. An economist, he had worked for the International Monetary Fund in Washington, and had earned master’s and doctor’s degrees in that field in the US. He had served as African director at the IMF, was a vice governor and governor of the regional Central Bank of West African States. Houphouët-Boigny urged him to return home and help his country dig itself out of its crisis. He appointed Ouattara chairman of an economic stabilisation programme and then as prime minister, a post which had been vacant since independence 30 years before.

When the old man died in 1993, Ouattara decided to go for the big prize, running unsuccessfully in elections in 1995 and 2000 as the candidate for the Opposition party known as the Rally of the republicans. Critics viewed him as too Western and a technocrat. He was disqualified both times because of a ruling that a presidential candidate can’t have a foreign parent. In 1995 a court had ruled that his mother was from Burkina Faso, a claim he has denied. But that ruling was amended in 2002, allowing him to go back to politics after having returned to the IMF.

The villain of the recent impasse in Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo, was one of the main instigators of student demonstrations against Houphouët-Boigny’s government in the early 1980s and along with his wife, founded a political group which became the Ivorian Popular Front. But they had to flee into exile in France, where they remained until 1988, when the old president had effectively forgiven him by declaring that “the tree did not get angry with the bird”. In his first election against the old man, Gbagbo played upon Houphouët-Boigny’s age, but was ignominiously defeated.

Until the end of the century, Ivory Coast was run by Houphouët-Boigny’s chosen successor, Henri Konan Bédié. Unlike the old man, he tightened his grip on the nation’s political life by clapping opposition figures in jail and by declaring a policy of Ivoirité (Ivoriness), alienating the fairly large segment of the population whose origins were outside the country’s boundaries. He was deposed by a military coup in 1999 which installed General Robert Guéï, who reduced crime and corruption and conducted a regime of austerity and fought against wastefulness.

Gbagbo won a new election in 2000, but since that time there has been another period of unrest and an election which was scheduled for 2005 was held up until last year.Ouattara clearly won that contest, and his victory was immediately recognised by the United Nations and the international community. But Gbagbo refused to give up his post and was actually sworn in by the constitutional council in December. Ouattara was forced to run an alternative government from the Golf Hotel, a luxury property in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city and former capital. Clashes between forces loyal to both men as well as with UN troops have left more than 1500 dead.

So Alassane Ouattara has finally won the fight. But the taste of victory is far less than sweet, as he now has to begin the hard work of repairing his country’s shattered economy, not to mention mending the breaches between those who support him and his defeated opponent. And we will see if this shining light will also fizzle out as did one Laurent Gbagbo, the one-time saviour of Ivory Coast.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca