Alassane Ouattara: The outsider

The BBC News Website profiles Ivory Coast's most significant opposition leader in the past few years, Alassane Dramane Ouattara, as an about-turn allows him to contest presidential elections later this year.

For many in the mainly Muslim north of the country, the exclusion of "Ado", as he is often known, from recent elections, came to symbolise their own marginalisation from the heart of Ivory Coast's political and economic centres of power.

Ouattara is a former Ivory Coast prime minister but courts say his mother was a foreigner

The rebel New Forces have been in control of northern Ivory Coast since September 2002 and have taken up Mr Ouattara's case as one of their key demands - although he has always denied claims that he is behind the armed uprising.

The constitution was changed so that only those who could prove both their parents were born Ivorian nationals could contest presidential elections.

Although Mr Ouattara is former prime minister of Ivory Coast, courts have ruled that his mother was from neighbouring Burkina Faso and he has held a Burkina diplomatic passport.

Migrant magnet

Ivory Coast was for many years West Africa's richest country and so acted as a magnet for immigrants from its poorer neighbours, such as Burkina Faso and Mali - at one point, a third of the people in Ivory Coast were foreigners, and many were Muslim.

Many more Ivorians have family ties across the borders drawn by colonial powers which do not respect the social and cultural reality on the ground.

So millions of people saw the constitutional changes as a move to discriminate against them and voted for his Rally of Republicans party (RDR).

But as the economy began to decline, the largely Christian peoples of the centre and south of Ivory Coast, who had dominated the country since independence began to resent such a large foreign presence.

Foreign stooge

Following a recent South Africa-brokered peace deal, President Laurent Gbagbo bowed to heavy pressure to overrule the constitution and let Mr Ouattara stand in elections due in October 2005.

But he has used meetings with his supporters to portray himself as the representative of true Ivorians.

In addition to insinuating that Mr Ouattara is a Burkinabe, Mr Gbagbo has also portrayed him as a French stooge.

The president has accused the former colonial power, which has a military base in the main city, Abidjan, of abandoning Ivory Coast in its hour of need and not using force to put down the rebellion.

He also says France favours Mr Ouattara.

An economist by training, Ado has spent much of his career at the International Monetary Fund - where he rose to be deputy head - and the West African Central Bank.

He had a brief taste of power when served as prime minister between 1990 and 1993 under Ivory Coast's founding father Felix Houphouet-Boigny.

After Mr Houphouet-Boigny died in 1993, Henri Konan Bedie succeeded to the presidency despite Mr Ouattara's protestations.

Mr Ouattara resigned as prime minister and went to the IMF in Washington but said he would return to Ivory Coast and run for the presidency.

Nationalist card

His citizenship, masked behind the policy of Ivoirite or Ivorianess, has remained a burning issue in the Ivory Coast since then - and successive rulers have found it expedient to exclude Mr Ouattara from the polls.

Gbagbo casts himself as standing up for the rights of Ivorians against foreign influence

Months of instability sparked by attempts to discredit Mr Ouattara culminated in Ivory Coast's first coup in December 1999, by General Robert Guei.

At first the coup appeared to be good news for Mr Ouattara, and several of his supporters assumed senior positions in the military government.

But it became clear that Gen Guei planned to run for the presidency himself and he began employing similar tactics to Mr Bedie.

In July 2000, Gen Guei's military government tightened the nationality criteria for presidential candidates, declaring that candidates must have two Ivorian parents, and must never have held the nationality of any other country.

Mr Ouattara was excluded from the December 2000 poll but Gen Guei's attempts to rig the outcome were defeated by massive street protests by supporters of Laurent Gbagbo - a veteran opposition leader.

Ado may again have hoped that a change of regime would be good news for him but it was not to be.

Xenophobic attacks on Burkinabes in Abidjan by supporters of Mr Gbagbo were a sign of things to come.

Like his two predecessors, Mr Gbagbo found it useful to shore up his new position of power by using nationalism to attack his main rival.

Nasty

There was no sign of a change to the rules on contesting presidential elections and the 2002 uprising let Mr Gbagbo portray himself as under attack from foreign powers.

More xenophobic attacks followed - on both Burkinabes and the many thousands of French in Ivory Coast.

While prime minister, Mr Ouattara was an effective economic manager and succeeded in pruning government spending.

This earned him praise from international economic bodies but annoyed senior figures in the then ruling party and civil servants.

Some have commented that if competence were the main election issue, Mr Ouattara would romp home.

But Mr Gbagbo's supporters have reacted with outrage to the suggestion that Ado be allowed to run - after years of seeing him demonised on state media as a foreigner.

With Ado being allowed to stand, the election campaign looks set to be a nasty one - and could prove too nasty for this soft-spoken economist.