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Ivorian Parliament OKs Looser Nationality Rule for Presidential Candidates

by Reuters

   ABIDJAN --

   Ivory Coast's parliament on Tuesday approved changing the constitution
   to ease nationality rules for presidential candidates, a move the
   government says will end prolonged instability but which the opposition
   says is undemocratic.

   Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara promised during his reelection
   campaign last year to remove the constitution's requirement for
   presidential candidates to have parents who are both native-born
   Ivorians -- a sore point in a country that has long attracted
   immigrants from neighboring states in West Africa.

   Nationality was at the heart of a crisis that began with a 1999 coup
   and ballooned into a 2002-2003 civil war that split the major
   cocoa-producing country in two for eight years.

   The new proposals soften the nationality clause, which had been used by
   Ouattara's opponents to bar him from elections and was a symbol of
   exclusion, particularly of northerners like him whose family ties often
   straddle borders.

   Of 250 members of parliament, 239 voted for the constitutional change
   while eight voted against and two abstained. The measure will now go to
   a referendum Oct. 30.

   Other revisions included removing a maximum age of 75 for presidential
   candidates and making it easier to change the constitution in the
   future.

   Opposition politicians and some civil society groups have opposed the
   changes. Pascal Affi N'Guessan, the head of the main opposition FPI
   party, criticized the proposed creation of the post of vice-president
   and a senate, a third of whose members would be appointed by the
   president, among other changes.

   Opposition supporters demonstrated against the draft constitution on
   Saturday and promised to do so again if it was passed by parliament.