When Charles de Gaulle dissolved the Fourth Republic in '58, he promulgated a constitution for the French community in Africa (as well as France); this was ratified by the great majority of Ivoirians, reflecting the success of assimilation. The politically active population, both Muslim and Catholic, strongly identified with France. Felix Houphouët-Boigny became the country's first president and proceeded to concentrate all power in his own hands [*]. His personalized regime was not extremely repressive, compared to neighbors, but he did his share of skimming. His birthplace, Yamoussoukro, became the seat of the world's largest Roman Catholic church (which John Paul II obligingly dedicated), despite the fact that so few Catholics live in the area. The cost of the basilica doubled the national debt of Côte d'Ivoire. Then, in 1993, he died. The country's hitherto excellent economic performance was deteriorating. Economic growth since 1996 has been nil.

When he died, he was succeeded by Henri Konan Bédié, who served out the balance of his seventh term in office. In '99, Bédié altered the constitution to bar children of immigrants from running for the presidency (Zambia has a similar rule). This was obviously intended to exclude Alassane Ouattara from running. The poll was boycotted, and later that year Gen. Robert Gueï overthrew Bédié in the RCI's first coup. Gueï then staged elections, claimed to have won them, but was then driven from office by riots and insurgents. Laurent Gbagbo, who is the RCI's current head of state, came to power instead.

This left unresolved the dispute between the followers of Ouattara and Gbagbo; the division tended to follow a north-south division, which (in turn) followed a Muslim-Christian division. Bédié had also, in the interest of retaining power, planted evil in the country:

Head Heeb: Under Bédié, a new word entered the Ivoirian political vocabulary - ivoirité. Ivoirité was something relatively new on the African scene - not tribalism, but nationalism. The ivoirité movement soon became explicitly nativist, and guest workers from Mali and Burkina Faso - many of whom had the same ethnic heritage as their Ivoirian neighbors and had lived in Côte d'Ivoire for decades—became its targets. Similar hostilities have since developed in other countries—for instance, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea has urged his countrymen to attack migrant workers with machetes—and there had been previous movements against Asian merchants or disliked tribes, but intra-tribal hostility on the basis of nationality was little known at the time. Another casualty of ivoirité was relations between the Christian south and the Muslim north, many of whom had migrated to Côte d'Ivoire during colonial times.

Initially the French intervened to sustain the crumbling government of Pres. Gbagbo (Head Heeb; hereafter, HH); at the time, there was an emerging human crisis, as tens of thousands of northerners fled the fighting, only to find themselves stigmatized in the south (HH, Guardian). At the same time, the French Foreign Ministry pursued negotiations with the rebel forces [*].

In order to provide momentum to the peace process, which appeared to have become stalemated, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin invited the Ivoirian "political forces," i.e., the parties represented in the parliament plus representatives of the three Ivoirian rebel groups to meet in Paris in January 2003. Out of these intensive negotiations emerged the Marcoussis agreement, signed on January 24, 2003.

The Marcoussis accord provides a format for addressing some of the key contentious issues — citizenship, land ownership, and eligibility for the presidency, which Ivoirians have debated for some time. ...To implement the agreement, the parties agreed that a "Government of National Reconciliation" would be formed around a consensus prime minister.