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COTE D’IVOIRE / ELECTION UPDATE
STORY: COTE D’IVOIRE / ELECTION UPDATE
TRT: 1.02
SOURCE: ONUCI
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: FRENCH/ NATS
DATELINE: 8 DECEMBER 2010, ABIDJAN, COTE D’IVOIRE
1. Med shot, arrivals
2. Wide shot, lateral view of the podium
3. SOUNDBITE (French) Y.J. Choi, Secretary-General Special Representative for Cote d'Ivoire, United Nations:
“There was a successful presidential election with over 81 percent participation, except for the last minute confusion about its result. Yet there is no reason for us to remain confused because the will of the people as expressed on 28 November is irrefutable.”
4. Close up, Powerpoint presentation showing election results
5. SOUNDBITE (French) Y.J. Choi, Secretary-General Special Representative for Cote d'Ivoire, United Nations:
“The collation of their reports further confirmed the trends I had obtained two days earlier i.e. at that moment it was almost certain who had won and who had lost the election.”
6. Med shot, ambassadors
The Special Representative of the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General for Côte d’Ivoire, Y.J. Choi today (8 December) gave a step by step explanation to journalists on the methods used for the certification of the second round of the presidential election in the country.
Stressing the impartiality of the UN in certifying Côte d’Ivoire’s presidential elections, the envoy talked about how there is no doubt that opposition leader Alassane Ouattara won despite the outgoing president Laurent Gbagbo claim to the contrary.
SOUNDBITE (French) Y.J. Choi, Secretary-General Special Representative for Cote d'Ivoire, United Nations:
“There was a successful presidential election with over 81 percent participation, except for the last minute confusion about its result. Yet there is no reason for us to remain confused because the will of the people as expressed on 28 November is irrefutable.”
The first method, the Special Representative explained during a press conference at the headquarters of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI) in Abidjan, consisted of obtaining the voting trends as early as possible, deploying 721 dedicated staff members to an equal number of carefully pre-selected polling stations throughout the country, who telephoned him to give the results of the second round.
The head of UNOCI further explained that his second method was to collect the electoral results from the 19 regional electoral commissions.
SOUNDBITE (French) Y.J. Choi, Secretary-General Special Representative for Cote d'Ivoire:
“The collation of their reports further confirmed the trends I had obtained two days earlier i.e. at that moment it was almost certain who had won and who had lost the election.”
Regarding the third method, Choi said that this involved examining all 20,000 tally sheets received by UNOCI from the Ivorian authorities on 30 November for the purpose of certification. As a result, he added, a number of tally sheets had to be discarded.
On the issue of the complaints about election “irregularities” made by President Laurent Gbagbo’s camp and which were used as the basis for the announcement made by the Constitutional Council on 3 December 2010, Choi recalled that these complaints were based on two main arguments.
The first, explained the head of UNOCI, was on the use of violence in nine departments in the north which prevented people from voting. On this issue, Choi said a rate of participation as high as 81% certainly could not mean that there was enough violence to prevent people from voting.
Concerning the second claim that tally sheets had not been signed by President Gbagbo’s representatives, Choi said that after having reviewed all the tally sheets in the departments concerned and discarded those that were not signed by representatives of President Gbagbo’s camp, UNOCI had concluded that even such an exercise did not alter in any significant way the outcome of the second round.
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