‘Social Discontent’ Grips Ivory Coast as Economic Gains Pass Many By<br />Mr. Ouattara, an American-trained economist, is under acute pressure to solve what the local media refers to as "the social discontent," a term<br />that encompasses the striking teachers and workers, the raging students and a recent military mutiny that revived painful memories of a civil war that left thousands dead.<br />Edith Brou said that All of the social discontent that’s building worries me and doesn’t bode well for calm in the future,<br />Ivory Coast said that every Ivorian thinks the time is ripe to have his share of the ‘emergence,’ the term used by authorities, in relation<br />" he said the thinking was, with workers reasoning<br />that the state "should give it to us if they give it to others." Government officials have struck measured tones in their responses to both the mutiny and the strike, calling for calm and emphasizing that aggrieved parties’ demands will be heard. that Why can’t we get our money?<br />"We need our diplomas." Ivory Coast has in recent weeks been shaken by a 180,000-strong civil servant strike<br />that closed public schools and curtailed hospital services — a period of agitation in a West African country regarded as a success story in a region prone to instability.<br />"They should stop screwing our teachers!" A crowd of students behind him whooped in approval as Mr. Bamba, a high<br />school student here in Ivory Coast, continued to tear into the government’s treatment of public-school teachers.
