Côte d'Ivoire's President Laurent Gbagbo used a prescient campaign slogan in the run-up to the country's Nov. 28 presidential run-off election: "We win, or we win."
Despite regional and international recognition of Alassane Dramane Ouattara as the winner of the poll, Gbagbo wrapped himself in the Ivorian tricolor for an inauguration ceremony on Dec. 4, warning darkly against any threat to Ivorian sovereignty.
The move followed a decision by the country's Constitutional Court, stacked with Gbagbo cronies and acolytes, to void the Independent Electoral Commission's results giving Ouattara 54 percent of the votes, saying that the commission's delay in announcing the results made them constitutionally invalid. Nowhere in its decision, however, did the court acknowledge that the delays were due to Gbagbo loyalists storming the commission's press conference and tearing up the results to keep them from being announced.