On air: Must Ivory Coast prioritise peace above all else?
| 13:53 UK time, Monday, 3 January 2011
When there was an electoral stand-off in Zimbabwe, power-sharing was the solution and Robert Mugabe remained President. In Kenya, power-sharing was also the preferred route to peace and Mwai Kibaki remained President. (In both cases the opposition leaders, Morgan Tsvangirai and Raila Odinga, became Prime Minister.)
The calculation was made that shared power gave [peace the best chance, and that peace was more important than trying to establish who had won and then implementing the result. Bearing in mind Africa's terrible history of civil wars, the pressure to avoid them is inevitable.
Now, Ivory Coast is choosing an alternative to shared power, but the principle of peace above all else remains.
A delegation of African leaders (including Mr Odinga) are in Abidjan to ask Laurent Gbagbo to stand down in return for a legal amnesty and a guarantee that his personal assets will be secured. The alternative, they will tell, Mr Gbagbo is military intervention.
Is such a deal a reasonable and sensible solution? Or if Laurent Gbagbo lost the election should he forced to leave power without these promises, even if war is the consequence?
The flip-side to this is whether it's appropriate to try and tempt someone from power when the country's Constitutional Council says he's won the election.
The whole stand-off is explained here.
