Risk Professional: Ivory Coast - Gbagbo forces hand of foreign governments

Yesterday, Gbagbo, who is under threat of forced removal from ECOWAS and, expected to be announced soon, the African Union and subject to travel and asset freezing sanctions from the EU and a number of other countries, decided to act like a president.

But the issue of who is president seems to be settled in the minds of almost everyone that isn't Gbagbo or a member of his coterie - and Gbagbo isn't it.

In the election held on 28th November 2010. When the votes were counted, the result was 54-46 in favour of Alassane Ouattara. The incumbent, Gbagbo refused to relinquish, his position in favour of the winner.

Bizarrely, Gbagbo's position is a kind of military coup in reverse - holding onto power instead of overturning a government to get it: he has the support (for the time being at least) of the Army. He also has control of the only effective media in the country because it is state owned. More dangerously, he has the support of armed civilian groups who say they will not allow ECOWAS or the AU to enter Abidjan to eject Gbagbo.

It's not the first time Gbagbo has clung to power: he mounted a successful coup in 2000 and declared himself president. Under the constitution, his term expired five years later. But he refused to leave, saying that the country, in an aftermath of a civil war that largely took place during his tenure (but for which he has not been blamed) and repeatedly postponed the election saying that that the country was too unstable.

There is irony in bucketloads: the 2000 coup was staged after General Robert Geui watched the results of an election, decided he didn't like them, dissolved the election commission and declared himself president. Ouattara, and others, had been banned from taking part in the election by an order of the Supreme Court. Gbagbo was swept into the Presidential Palace by a people's revolt which the Army did not try very hard to resist and amid reports that many of the military joined the protesters, said foreign media reports at the time.

After the 2010 election, Ouattara and a couple of hundred people including those he hopes will be the government, moved into the Golf Hotel, near the Presidential Palace in Abidjan. The UN, who had supervised the elections and declared them open, fair and well managed (much to the surprise of many who had expected Gbagbo to fix them) turned the hotel into a secure compound where they now protect the man who the people say should be President.Gbagbo's response was to surround the hotel with his loyal troops and to effective cut it off.

The UN presence is largely made up of a Nigerian contingent but the UN has said it may send up to 2,000 more "peacekeepers" in an effort to prevent the country once more descending into civil war. The UN says that more than 200 citizens have already died in clashes between rivals. It also says that UN patrols are finding the population increasingly hostile due to the state broadcaster RTI "giving out lies, that UNOCI fired on crowds which is completely false."

Now Ouattara is powerless: he has no access to the organs of government. All he can hope for is that pressure builds so that Gbagbo sees his position as hopeless. Yesterday, speaking from his luxurious bunker, he called for Gbagbo to be faced with a show of force from ECOWAS and the AU saying that Gbagbo would not stand and fight: that he would run away if presented with such a demonstration of force. Some media reported that he had asked for the deployment of foreign "special forces" to remove Gbagbo.

Who those special forces might belong to is anybody's guess: Côte d'Ivoire was once a French colony and there remain substantial French business interests there. But that doesn't mean that France is a supporter of the status quo: as long ago as 19th December, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said "Gbagbo has no choice but to leave the power he has usurped as quickly as possible." That was immediately after the EU decided to impose sanctions against Gbagbo and 19 close associates including his wife, Simone.

Gbagbo's next step, taken yesterday, was to demand that the Canadian and British Ambassadors be recalled - at leas that's what RTI said in a lunchtime broadcast. Both countries responded quickly with rather lengthy public explanations that could have been shortened to just seven letters, ending in "off."

But they did not say it to Gbagbo because they are not talking to him. "Canada does not recognise Laurent Gbagbo's claim to government. As such his request is illegitimate," a statement attributed to Lynn Meahan, spokesman for Lawrence Cannon, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister. ""Canada has not received a request from the legitimate government of Mr. Alassane Ouattara to terminate our ambassador's functions."

The UK's Foreign Office, which has so far not published a formal response to media, told The Guardian " "The British government recognises Alassane Ouattara as the democratically elected president of Ivory Coast. It recognises the legitimacy of statements made by or on behalf of his government. The British government does not accept the validity of statements made by others."

For Ouattara, there's just one small issue: he doesn't actually have a government. He has a cabinet in waiting but it has no power and no control over what is happening outside the thin blue line.

All the while he's holed up in the Golf Hotel, the chances of a smooth transition are sinking into a sand-trap and the country is heading for the rough. If enough of the people have been turned against him by the media, then his only real option will be to try to buy favour with public spending and for that he's going to need a wedge that the state, having lost its once proud position as one of Africa's richest countries, doesn't appear to have.