BY JIBRIL TURE

President Alassane Ouattara, who won re-election for a controversial third term last week amid massive social disturbance that has claimed dozens of lives, met Wednesday morning with former President Henri Konan Bédié, chairman of the country’s oldest party, PDCI-RDA, in an attempt to blaze a path toward peace.

It’s been a tense three months in Cote d’Ivoire since President Alassane Ouattara announced on August 6 his intention to run for a third term, a move that the opposition rejected and called for civil disobedience that has reportedly resulted in 60 deaths and a massive destruction of properties. To pave the way for peace, President Ouattara extended an olive branch to former president Henri Konan Bédié who, to the relief of their fellow-countrymen, accepted the offer for dialogue. So the two leaders met yesterday at the Hotel du Golf, a place full of symbolism where the two leaders stayed for weeks and on during the 2011 post-election civil war that claimed 3,000 lives.

Yesterday’s meeting was designed to be a first step in what President Ouattara described a few days earlier in an address to the nation as a dialogue intended to be “sincere and inclusive and respective of the constitutional order.”

Addressing the press following the 40-minute tête-à-tête, President Ouattara described the meeting as a fraternal conversation intended to restore confidence for the sake of peace in the country:

“We agreed that peace is the dearest and most important thing for us and for the Ivorians. So we decided to act to achieve that.”

Pointing to the fact that yesterday’s meeting was just the beginning of a process intended to be a thorough search for peace, the president also said: “We agreed to meet again very soon to continue this dialogue that has had a good start.”

The head of state concluded: “Trust is back.”

Former President Henri Konan Bédié concurred:

“We have broken the wall of ice, the silence. And we will continue to call each other in the coming days and weeks, and meet to turn the country back to how it was before.”

The high-profile meeting is felt as a relief in a country that is still bleeding from the wounds of past outbreaks of violence only to be shaken again by the recent mayhem after the opposition’s call for civil disobedience to protest Ouattara third term that they deemed illegal. So far, the death toll is estimated at 60 people, with dozens of members of the opposition arrested, while many have fled to neighboring countries. An estimated 800 people have fled the country in the wake of the violence.

As if often the case, each side has laid down its requirements for the pursuit of the dialogue. The opposition demands the release of all the leaders of the opposition and their party members, and members of the social society that have been incarcerated. Additionally, President Bédié requires an inclusive dialogue that involves members of all the opposition parties. For his part, President Ouattara called on the opposition parties to retract their call for civil disobedience to end the violence.