Observers give Ivory Coast vote endorsement, turnout disputed

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Observers gave Ivory Coast's weekend presidential ballot a clean bill of health on Monday, despite complaints from opposition candidates, in a boost to President Alassane Ouattara who is widely expected to be re-elected.

A former senior IMF official, Ouattara has led the world's top cocoa grower to a revival, after a 2011 civil war, that has made it a magnet for investment as other African economies have crumbled amid a global commodities crash.

Faced with a partial opposition boycott and concern over voter apathy, turnout will be critical to legitimising Ouattara's mandate if he wins as expected. And early figures from the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) appeared to allay fears that voters had stayed home on Sunday.

"The participation rate is around 60 percent - a figure which will become more precise as results gradually come in," said CEI vice-president Sorou Kone.

However, regional bloc ECOWAS's elections observation mission later seemed to contradict the election commission's announcement of a healthy turnout though it acknowledged that the vote had been fair and transparent.

"The mission observed weak participation in most of the voting sites," it said in a statement, but added that it was not in a position to give an estimated figure for turnout.

The commercial capital, Abidjan, was calm on Monday, though traffic was light, as the nation of around 24 million people awaited initial results from the CEI expected later in the day.

The vote was marked by some organisational hitches, including the late arrival of materials that led the CEI to extend voting in some places by two hours. Many of the computer tablets used to verify voters' identities had also failed.

PEACE CI, a platform of civil society organisations that fielded some 2,000 observers, said that minor organisational problems had not affected the credibility of the election.

"We believe the election was peaceful, transparent, credible and inclusive," said U.S. ambassador Terence McCulley, speaking for a separate U.S. observation mission that included 70 diplomats.

NATIONALITY QUESTION

Several opposition candidates had dropped out of the race in the days before the vote, alleging it had been rigged, accusations dismissed by the CEI as unsubstantiated.

Bertin Konan Kouadio, one of the six candidates who remained in the race to unseat Ouattara, claimed that the process had been tainted by irregularities, including foreigners who had been caught attempting to vote. He gave no further details.

"I warn Ouattara: he won't do to me what he has done to my predecessors and my elders; he won't succeed in stealing my victory," he told journalists after casting his vote.

Another candidate, Simeon Konan Kouadio, said his campaign team had been informed of massive fraud during the election, but offered no evidence.

The question of nationality has long been a burning political issue in Ivory Coast, where decades of relative prosperity have attracted Muslim migrants, largely from neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.

Ouattara, who was barred from seeking the presidency over what opponents said were his foreign origins before finally coming to power in 2010, told Reuters last week he would seek to strip nationality clauses from the constitution if elected.

(Writing by Daniel Flynn and Joe Bavier; Editing by Ralph Boulton)