Hon Speaker, I am also aware that the hon member took a trip to the Ivory Coast, so he must be speaking from an informed position. Let me explain what happened and what we discovered as the high-level panel began to do its work. I am going to help the hon member by explaining properly, because the high-level panel had a team of experts that first went in and looked at the facts, the claims, counterclaims and allegations. The high-level panel also went in, talked to everyone there, and asked them questions.
We should understand that their IEC is not like ours. Ours has the final say on elections; it pronounces finally who has won and who has lost. It has said many times that the ANC has won, and nobody can challenge that. [Laughter.]
What happened is that there were four important bodies at the level of looking after the processes as well as the conclusion. These bodies are the IEC, which is basically administrative; the UN, which all parties agreed should be brought in to oversee and certify; the facilitator, who was the President of Burkina Faso; and the Constitutional Council.
All these had different functions. The facilitator's function was to facilitate, and the electoral commission's was to pronounce the provisional results - not final results, provisional results. The UN representative had to certify the results. The Constitutional Council's function is to receive the results, complaints and allegations, as well as to investigate. After investigating, the Constitutional Council should then determine and pronounce the final results. That is the procedure.
I am not going to go in to detail because we sat in front of these bodies, one by one, for a long time until the evening. I will just explain what happened at the end. The IEC did not agree to finalise their own conclusions; they were supposed to do so within three days. Three days elapsed; they were arguing. The reason they were arguing is that they are not like our IEC. Their IEC is political and comprises representatives of political parties. They could not agree.
On the fourth day, the chairperson decided to leave the IEC and went on to announce the provisional results. He went to the hotel where Ouattara operates from and next to him were the French and the US ambassadors. These are accusations that people levelled against those results. By the time this happened, all four institutions had received the same results at the same time.
Therefore they all had the minutes, as they call them, from different regions or areas which were saying exactly the same thing. What were they saying? They were saying that Ouattara has won, in other words he was leading. This is what the chairperson of the IEC announced, provisionally. As soon as he announced this, the UN representative certified that the results are correct as announced by the IEC.
The international community then said Ouattara had won. These were not the final results. That is the debate we have been engaging in. We asked why an announcement was made that a person has won when it was not announced by the final body that has the right to do so. This was the problem. This explanation will even help those who asked why we had a problem and, given all of this, why should we support this side or that side. Clearly there were things that were wrong.
Whether there was a debate within the IEC or not, the fact of the matter is that these remain provisional results, not the final results. The final results, therefore, are those that were announced by the Constitutional Council; it is a legal body and it did its job.
The entire committee was brought before the high-level panel to be asked about what had happened; all of them - there is not a single one of them who was not questioned. We established the fact that, in reality, the results that were supported by the world were provisional. The final results were Gbagbo's. Since all the minutes or results were the same, we asked what had happened.
The IEC could not agree on the four regions that Gbagbo had complained about. Indeed, when the Constitutional Council looked at the results, they were the same. However, there were complaints and they did their job. They investigated the four regions and found that there was something wrong. They nullified the results of these regions. They also investigated three more regions and, finally, emerged with 12% fraudulent results. They, therefore, changed the initial results and Gbagbo's figures were more than Ouattara's. Gbagbo was pronounced as the winner.
The question that the high-level panel asked - because the panel had all the information - was, if Gbagbo had complained about four regions, what was the reason for investigating the other three? The high-level panel also wanted to know who instructed the investigation of the other three regions. Their answer was that they have a right by law, it was self-referral. The panel proceeded to ask if the Constitutional Council realised that they had investigated regions that nobody had complained about, something which altered the results. They claimed they had the right to do so.
The panel put it to the Constitutional Council that the three regions that they investigated were only in the north, the stronghold of Ouattara. The panel wanted to know why they didn't look at the regions in the south. Their answer was that they just wanted to look at the north. The panel brought it to their attention that they had changed the results and had abused their authority as a legal entity. Furthermore, the panel told them that had they not done so and only looked into the four regions and disqualified Ouattara's votes, he would still have the majority votes. The panel put it to them that they had indeed realised that and wanted to add three regions so that they would get 12%.
Finally, having considered that the Constitutional Council, using their legal status, took away Ouattara's votes, the high-level panel declared Ouattara the winner. That is how it was concluded, and that is why the results said Ouattara won. That is what happened, my hon member, and that is why we agreed with the decision. We were there. We questioned and were satisfied. They did not act honourably at first, compared to the manner in which they acted with regard to the final results. I thank you. [Applause.]