The war in Côte d’Ivoire is over. That was the declaration of President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader turned Prime Minister Guillaume Soro as Gbagbo set foot in the north for the first time since rebels occupied it in 2002.

“The war is over,” Gbagbo told some 25,000 people in the Bouake Municipal Stadium on 30 July, calling on the crowd to repeat the phrase. “May all Ivorians stand up and shout it with me. The war is over.” Soro said Gbagbo’s presence in Bouake, the former-rebel stronghold, “seals the reunification of the country”.

Many people wept and some fainted as the masses in the stadium stood, joined hands and prayed for peace in Côte d’Ivoire.

But in the same breath as his proclamation that the war has ended, Gbagbo said the government will now take on organising long-overdue presidential elections. That is where the work begins, experts say. While the Bouake meeting was important and a positive step, the hard work lies ahead, nearly five months after Soro and Gbagbo signed a peace accord. A complex identification and voter registration process and the disarmament of former rebels and pro-government militias still stand between Ivorians and lasting peace.

“The Bouake event is just ceremony,” said a western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s a good thing, but it’s not enough.”

Consisting mainly of speeches and a ceremonial burning of some weapons, the event – attended by several African heads of state – was nonetheless a long-awaited show of unity, with loyalist forces and former rebels, along with international forces, sharing the job of securing the city, which was the site of an attempt on Soro’s life just one month ago.

“It’s a historic moment for Cote d’Ivoire,” Oumar Konate, a student in Bouake, told IRIN. “Especially for us, the youth. We have suffered for a long time from the division of our country.”

Opposition supportive, but sceptical

Historic moment or not, the country's main opposition leaders stayed away from the Bouake event, sending delegates instead. Opposition sources were quick to say that Alassane Dramane Ouattara, head of the Rally of Republicans (RDR) party, and ex-president Henri Konan Bedie of the former ruling Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire, fully backed the event and the peace process, and their decision not to attend did not signify otherwise. Still, the opposition is voicing concerns about the way forward, particularly elections.

What’s important is what will follow the Bouake event, RDR spokesperson Ally Coulibaly told IRIN. “It’s a momentous event in terms of symbolism, but peace is not found in symbols.”

For the opposition peace can be found in free and fair elections – something they said had been put in jeopardy by a UN Security Council decision earlier this month to eliminate the post of UN High Representative for Elections. Opposition leaders last week called on the UN to reconsider its decision. “We are worried and we’re demonstrating our worry,” Bedie spokesperson Niamkey Koffi told IRIN.

In a 28 July communiqué, the opposition RDR party said the Security Council decision “can be interpreted as a renouncement” of the goal of holding transparent and fair elections. RDR’s Coulibaly told IRIN: “We would see the UN as responsible for any chaos that would result from badly organised elections.”

After planning and cancelling presidential elections several times in the past four years, Côte d’Ivoire is set to go to the polls in early 2008.

Excluded

A former UN official who was recently posted in Côte d’Ivoire is concerned that the current peace process has been almost exclusively a Soro and Gbagbo show.

“There has been a lack of transparency and inclusiveness in the entire process,” said Pierre Schori, who was special representative for the UN secretary-general in Cote d’Ivoire from April 2005 to February 2007. “Civil society has not been included – neither has the political opposition, who were handed a fait accompli.”

Schori, who now heads a Madrid-based foreign policy think tank, said failure to reach a durable peace in Côte d’Ivoire “would have dire consequences”. He added: “I fervently hope that the Ivorian leaders will honour their commitment to their African peers, to the international community and above all to their suffering people.”