The most recent confusion over the elections in that country is whether around one million residents are eligible to vote.

Analysts say the delays have prolonged a political deadlock dating back to the 2003 civil war that is stopping vital reforms to the world's largest cocoa industry and unnerving potential investors in West Africa's former economic powerhouse.

"Since October 2005, our country has been governed by a president without a mandate," Alphonse Djedje Mady, general secretary of the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) told supporters at a meeting in Abidjan, according to Reuters.

Mady called on other parties to join it in demanding that the Ivorian electoral commission rapidly set a new election target date and ensure it was finally met.

PDCI candidate and former president Henri Konan Bedie is tipped as Gbagbo's nearest rival, with former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara closely behind him.

No new date has been set for the election after it was acknowledged this month that the poll would not go ahead as planned. Some observers predict that it could take months to resolve the inevitable disputes over voter eligibility.