Ouattara party calls Ivorian poll boycott, protest

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- Former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans (RDR) said Friday it would not participate in Ivory Coast's December 10 parliamentary election in protest at his exclusion from the poll.

The party leadership, in a statement issued after an emergency meeting, invited its activists to join protests in the main city Abidjan from Monday.

"The general secretariat meeting today...decided that the RDR will not participate in the December 10 election," party Secretary-General Henriette Dagri Diabate told a news conference, reading from the statement.

"Activists of all regions are invited to protest demonstrations in Abidjan from Monday, December 4," she said, adding that they were asking the party's candidates to withdraw from the poll.

The Supreme Court, which excluded Ouattara from the West African country's October 22 presidential election on nationality grounds, barred him from the parliamentary poll late Thursday for the same reasons.

Ouattara's Socialist rival Laurent Gbagbo won the presidential election.

Diabate said Friday that the RDR was withdrawing its members with immediate effect from a national reconciliation committee set up in the turbulent aftermath of the presidential election, when scores died in political and ethnic clashes.

"Too much is too much," she said.

Ouattara's opponents described him as a national of neighboring Burkina Faso. He and his supporters dismiss such allegations as a political ploy to keep him from power.

Ouattara was in France Friday.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

See related sites about Africa

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.