Alassane Ouattara

Alassane Ouattara (born January 1, 1942, Dimbokro, Côte d’Ivoire, French West Africa) Ivoirian economist and politician who was elected president of Côte d’Ivoire in 2010. Despite Ouattara’s victory, the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down, and the two established parallel administrations that both claimed legitimacy—until Gbagbo’s arrest in April 2011 effectively removed him from power.

Early life and career

Ouattara was born to a Muslim family of the Dioula people. There were claims that at least one of his parents hailed from neighbouring Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso); this would prove to be a contentious issue during his political career. Ouattara received his primary education in Côte d’Ivoire and his secondary education in Upper Volta. He then continued his studies in the United States, earning a B.Sc. (1965) in business administration from Drexel Institute of Technology, Philadelphia, and an M.A. (1967) and a Ph.D. (1972) in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ouattara was employed as an economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1968. He left the IMF in 1973 to begin working at the Central Bank of West African States (Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest; BCEAO), where he held various positions, including that of vice-governor, before returning to the IMF in 1984 to serve as director of the African department. In 1987 Ouattara also assumed the title of counsellor to the managing director of the IMF. He left the IMF in 1988 to become governor of the BCEAO, a position he held until December 1993, when he was made honorary governor.

Entry into the political arena

In April 1990, as Côte d’Ivoire was in the grips of an economic crisis, Pres. Félix Houphouët-Boigny appointed Ouattara to chair a special commission on economic recovery. Ouattara accepted this appointment while maintaining his position as governor at BCEAO. That November Ouattara also assumed the newly created post of prime minister under Houphouët-Boigny, although economic recovery still remained a priority for him. His strategies focused on privatization efforts and attempts to trim governmental expenses, resulting in unpopular austerity measures.

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As Houphouët-Boigny’s health deteriorated, Ouattara assumed more and more responsibility for overseeing the country’s affairs. When the ailing president died in December 1993, Ouattara became embroiled in a brief power struggle with Henri Konan Bédié, the president of the National Assembly. Under the terms of the constitution, Bédié was to assume the presidency, although there were many who hoped that Ouattara would be able to circumvent a Bédié presidency by forming a unity government. He was unable to do so because Bédié quickly took office on the same day that Houphouët-Boigny died. Two days later Ouattara resigned. He left the country in 1994 and took the position of deputy managing director of the IMF, which he would hold until 1999.

Meanwhile, Ouattara joined Côte d’Ivoire’s nascent Rally of the Republicans (Rassemblement des Républicains; RDR) in 1995 and planned on running as the RDR candidate in the country’s presidential election that year. He was prevented from doing so, however, because of recent changes stipulating that both parents of a candidate must be of Ivoirian birth and that the candidate must have resided continuously in Côte d’Ivoire for at least five years prior to the election. With the time that Ouattara had spent working abroad and the questions surrounding the nationality of one of his parents, many thought that the changes were specifically designed to prevent him from standing in the election. He was barred from participating in the 2000 presidential election by similar restrictions, including one that prohibited anyone from being a presidential candidate if they had ever claimed citizenship of another country. Ouattara had, in fact, also held Burkinabé (that is, of Burkina Faso) citizenship for a period of time, and his opponents used this detail to question whether he was even an Ivoirian citizen.

Over the next few years, the eligibility and citizenship issues were addressed. Ouattara was formally granted Ivoirian citizenship in 2002, and in late 2004 the National Assembly voted in favour of changing the constitution to specify that Ivoirians with at least one Ivoirian parent, rather than two, would be allowed to stand in presidential elections. The change was not ratified by a referendum, however, which Laurent Gbagbo, who had become president in 2000, argued was necessary before it could be promulgated. Still, Ouattara was cleared to run for president in 2005: under international pressure, Gbagbo invoked an article of the constitution that allowed him to override other articles of the document and declared Ouattara eligible to participate in the upcoming election.

Meanwhile, a failed coup in 2002 had fueled unrest and led to civil war, leaving the country divided into the rebel-held north, where Ouattara drew much of his support, and the government-controlled south, with United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping Forces in place to monitor a buffer zone between the two. During the early stages of the conflict, Ouattara was a target of violence, and by the end of 2002 he had left the country. He returned in January 2006.