Ivory Coast launched the revision of the electoral list on Saturday. This process should make it possible to register more than four million new voters in three weeks, a deadline that the opposition wants to extend, one year before the next presidential election.
“Activate your power. Register on the electoral list”: on social networks, the official posters of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) encourage new adults, many of whom are in this country where the population is young, to register .
Some 12,000 census locations will be open until November 10 across the country to encourage 4.5 million new voters to register.
Plea of Tidjane Thiam
But for the opposition, this deadline is too short. “We were informed that the operation would last three weeks, this is not enough, we are asking that it last several months,” declared Monday Tidjane Thiam, president of the Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) who is ‘expressed on behalf of a grouping of several opposition parties.
“We insisted that the operation last as long as possible. Everyone now agrees that our electoral list should include 4 or 5 million more voters than today,” added the former president of Credit Suisse, elected at the end of 2023 at the head of the PDCI.
The president of the CEI, Ibrahime Kuibiert Coulibaly, assures for his part that “the machines are configured to accommodate 50 applicants per day”, or in total nearly 14 million new voters.
Easy procedures
Several measures have been taken to facilitate the procedures, in particular the free certificate of nationality, a mandatory document for registration.
In 2023, for the local elections, eight million voters were registered on the lists, out of 29 million inhabitants, almost half of whom are under 18 years old. The next presidential election is scheduled for October 2025. Outgoing President Alassane Ouattara has not yet indicated whether he intends to run for a fourth term.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
