Slow start to Ivorian election campaign

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- Ivory Coast's presidential campaign has made a hesitant start, with most eyes on whether the country's biggest party will support or oppose military ruler Robert Guei after being excluded from the poll.

Guei, 59, kicked off with a televised campaign slot on Tuesday evening, telling voters he joined the race to satisfy the needs of both the soldiers who put him in power in a December coup and the population at large.

Ousted President Henri Konan Bedie, still nominally president of the former ruling Democratic Party (PDCI), called from Paris for activists to boycott the October 22 poll and condemned a court ruling excluding him from standing.

"What has happened is scandalous," Bedie told Radio France International on Wednesday. "Whatever administration results from this election will automatically be illegitimate."

The campaign, which opened officially on Saturday, has been slow to start.

Supporters drive convoys of cars round the main city Abidjan, carrying posters of their chosen candidate, and Socialist veteran Laurent Gbagbo has held a couple of rallies.

But the absence of the PDCI has made itself felt.

The party, which had an overwhelming majority in the ousted parliament, has said its political bureau will decide on Thursday how to respond after Bedie, his former Interior Minister Emile Constant Bombet -- the party's official candidate -- and other party members were all barred from standing.

PDCI sources say support is divided between those prepared to back Guei and those who want to oppose him, either through a boycott or by backing one of his four remaining challengers.

Soldiers' need

Gbagbo, 55, the only political heavyweight left in the race, heads the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI). He told Reuters on Tuesday that if he won he would invite members of the excluded parties to join his government.

The other of the three biggest parties, Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans (RDR), told its supporters to be ready for a call for "peaceful actions" to challenge the poll from which Ouattara is barred.

Guei, whose decision to run has come under fire both at home and abroad, acknowledges he lacks the support of a major party.

"I am certainly not a candidate with a label but I am the candidate of the people," he said on Tuesday, adding that if elected he would invite political rivals into government.

Young soldiers, who installed Guei after toppling Bedie in a December coup, mutinied in July, demanding payment of bonuses for their part in the coup.

Commenting on his motives for standing, Guei said: "In such a short time we have not been able to respond to all the people's expectations and particularly (those) of our soldiers."

The other three candidates in the race in the cocoa-producing country have all urged national reconciliation.

Labor Party hopeful Francis Wodie, 64, stood alone against Bedie in a turbulent 1995 poll boycotted by Gbagbo and the rest of the main opposition.

The other two candidates, Theodore Mel, 48, and Nicolas Dioulo, 58, are both minor players.

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