Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara won a blowout poll victory and a second five-year term in a weekend vote intended to draw a line under years of turmoil and a 2011 civil war, the elections commission announced on Wednesday.Ouattara won a total of 2,118,229 votes, or 83.66% of ballots cast, President of the Independent Electoral Commission Youssouf Bakayoko announced at a media conference. Sunday’s vote had a turnout of 54.63%, he said. The former International Monetary Fund official, whose leadership has helped the West African nation reemerge as a rising economic star after the 2011 civil war, faced a deeply divided opposition, Yahoo News reported. He won all but 16 votes in his home constituency of Kong, in Ivory Coast’s north, where more than 14,000 voters cast ballots. Sunday’s election was judged to be peaceful and transparent by observers, likely reassuring investors who have flooded into the world’s top cocoa grower, drawn by growth of around 9% over the past three years.
