AFP/Abidjan
Ivory Coast public television was back on air yesterday, pushing a message of reconciliation after months of deadly post-vote fighting in which it relayed propaganda and its equipment was destroyed.With a new logo and new decor, RTI (Radio Telediffusion Ivoirienne) resumed broadcasts after shutting down in early April as fighting between forces for rival presidents gripped Abidjan following disputed November elections.Ivorians were again able to tune into morning programme Matin Bonheur which featured “reconciliation” as its expression of the day, defining it as the “reestablishment of amity between people who have fallen out”.The broadcaster spread propaganda against election winner Alassane Ouattara during the standoff, being compared by his camp to Rwanda’s Radio Mille Collines which called for the killing of Tutsis in the 1994 genocide.It also spoke against the UN and France which backed Ouattara’s struggle to take over from Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to quit after losing the election in an impasse that ended with his arrest on April 11.RTI “must accompany the government in the reconciliation and reconstruction” of Ivory Coast, Communication Minister Souleymane Coty Diakite said late on Monday on the separate TCI (Television Cote d’Ivoire) channel.RTI, created in 1963, “is a symbol and is part of our heritage”, he said.The broadcaster is to undergo an overhaul worth 5bn CFA francs (about 7.6mn euros).The High Authority on Audiovisual Communication welcomed the resumption of RTI as “another step towards normalisation” in the battered nation, and called on it to promote “social cohesion”.Fighting linked to the election left more than 3,000 people dead and tens of thousands displaced from their homes in the west African country, which is the world’s leading cocoa producer.