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    December 11, 2011

Polls Open in Ivory Coast

   VOA News
   A woman with a baby on her back, votes at a polling station in Abidjan,
   Ivory Coast, December 11, 2011. Photo: Reuters
   A woman with a baby on her back, votes at a polling station in Abidjan,
   Ivory Coast, December 11, 2011.

   Ivory Coast voters are going to the polls in the country's first
   parliamentary elections in more than a decade.
   An election official is quoted as saying some polls in Abidjan had not
   opened nearly two hours after voting started Sunday, but that those
   polling stations will stay open late.
   The Election Commission says almost 1,000 candidates are vying for 255
   seats.
   President Alassane Ouattara's Democratic Party is poised to win the
   majority of the seats. Ouattara's coalition could also be helped by the
   supporters of former president Laurent Gbagbo calling for a boycott of
   the vote.
   In violence leading up to the election, Ivory Coast officials say three
   people were killed and three others wounded Wednesday when a rocket was
   fired into a residential courtyard in the Grand Lahou region just
   before an election rally of supporters of President Ouattara. He was
   sworn in as president after his forces arrested Gbagbo in April.
   Gbagbo refused to leave office after losing last November's
   presidential election, touching off weeks of violence that killed more
   than 3,000 people and displaced more than one million others.
   The former president is now in the Netherlands awaiting charges from
   the International Criminal Court on crimes against humanity following
   post-election fighting.

   Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.

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