Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council declares Alassane Ouattara winner of presidential election

​​​​​​​By Fulbert Yao and Mevlut Ozkan

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast/ISTANBUL (AA) - Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council on Tuesday declared President Alassane Ouattara the winner of the Oct. 25 election with nearly 90% of the vote.

The win extends his rule for a fourth term amid low voter turnout and opposition criticism of the elections.

The Council said Ouattara, candidate of the ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), won with more than 3.7 million votes, or 89.77%, securing an absolute majority needed for a first-round victory.

He was followed by Jean-Louis Billon Eugene with 3.09%, Simone Ehivet Gbagbo with 2.42%, Ahoua Don Mello with 1.97% and Henriette Lagou with 1.15%.

The election recorded a turnout of 50.10%, with 4.3 million of 8.6 million registered voters casting ballots, including 4.2 million valid votes, 105,156 invalid ballots, and 66,788 blank ballots.

The US Embassy in Abidjan congratulated Ouattara on his reelection.

“We reaffirm our desire to strengthen the exemplary bilateral ties uniting our two countries, in order to promote economic prosperity and regional security for the benefit of the American and Ivorian peoples,” it said in a statement on US social media platform Facebook.

While other candidates congratulated Ouattara, former President Laurent Gbagbo’s African People’s Party of Ivory Coast (PPACI) rejected the results as a "mock presidential election" and a "heist."

Gbagbo was barred from taking part in the election because of a criminal conviction and former Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam was disqualified due to dual nationality.

The PPACI is planning a march Saturday to protest “massacres of civilian populations and to demand the release of all political prisoners.”

The government has not responded to the accusations, but National Cohesion Minister Myss Belmonde Dogo and Mamadou Toure, deputy government spokesperson, visited the village of Nahio, where fighting left at least three dead, and several judicial investigations have been opened into pre-election violence.