The Ivorian 2020 presidential election is scheduled for 31 October and the Conseil constitutionnel or “Constitutional Council” – the top court in Côte d’Ivoire with responsibility for overseeing electoral disputes and matters of eligibility – has cleared only four out of 44 individuals hoping to run for the presidency.
On the ballot paper will be the current president, Alassane Ouattara, for the governing Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix (RHDP); Henri Konan Bédié, president from 1993-99, who will be running on the ticket of the Parti démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), founded by Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1946; Pascal Affi N’Guessan, a former prime minister standing for the centre-left Front populaire ivoirien, previously led by Laurent Gbagbo; and Kouadio Konan Bertin, a former PDCI youth leader.
The 40 aspirants whose applications were rejected by the Constitutional Council include the former president Laurent Gbagbo and former rebel leader-turned-prime minister Guillaume Soro. Though the court has determined that all 40 will not be able to stand in the election, the absence from the ballot paper of these two candidates in particular casts doubt on the security of next month’s vote.
Basis for exclusion
Both Gbagbo and Soro had their candidacy rejected because they had been tried and sentenced in absentia.
The former Ivorian president was sentenced in absentia in November 2019 to 20 years in jail for “looting” the local branch of the Banque Centrale des ׅÉtats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO, the “Central Bank of West African States”) during the post-election crisis of 2010 to 2011.
The president of the Commission électorale indépendante (CEI, the “Independent Electoral Commission”), Ibrahime Coulibaly-Kuibiert, said in August as he announced the revised list that anyone convicted of a crime would be struck from the list of candidates.
Four contenders were barred from standing on those grounds.
Laurent Gbagbo
Laurent Gbagbo, 75, is the immediate past president of Côte d’Ivoire. His refusal to accept the outcome of the November 2010 general election resulted in violence that led to the deaths of 3,000 people.
In April 2011, Gbagbo was forced from office, captured and held in a bunker at the presidential palace by a United Nations peacekeeping force and French-backed troops who supported his long-time arch-rival, Ouattara – internationally acknowledged as the winner of the run-off election five months earlier.
Gbagbo, together with his deputy Charles Blé Goudé, stood trial for eight years at the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. This trial made Gbagbo the first former head of state to be tried by the ICC.
Both men were freed under strict conditions a year ago. Gbagbo lives in exile in Brussels, pending the outcome of an appeal against the ICC ruling, and could be jailed (in theory at least) if he attempted to return to Côte d’Ivoire. This makes any suggestion of his return a sensitive matter, especially so close to the election. A pro-Gbagbo coalition however filed last month for his candidacy in the October election.
A day earlier, a court in Côte d’Ivoire had upheld the decision by the CEI to strike him from the electoral list. However, the coalition said in a statement that it would “submit President Laurent Gbagbo’s candidacy in line with scheduled procedures”.
Guillaume Soro
Guillaume Soro was barred from running in the 2020 presidential election on the grounds of a 20-year sentence, also in absentia, for alleged embezzlement of public funds and money laundering, handed down in April this year.
The political dimension of his conviction was not lost on Ivorians who have observed his rise to power over the past two decades, but his presidential ambitions largely explain his downfall.
Soro’s conviction can be understood as the latest chapter in a power struggle that began to play out after President Alassane Ouattara’s re-election in October 2015.
Soro vs Ouattara: kill your father
Ouattara received vital assistance from Soro during his ascent to power: he was commander-in-chief of the rebel forces that brought the illiberal regime of Laurent Gbagbo to an end. His political and military struggle to topple Gbagbo started with a failed coup d’état in September 2002 and continued until Gbagbo’s defeat and arrest on 28 April 2011.
Ouattara undoubtedly felt indebted to Soro and appointed him first as prime minister and then as Speaker of Parliament when he became president. He also turned a blind eye to the atrocities perpetrated by Soro’s rebels as they marched on Abidjan in 2010-11. However, as time passed and the loyalties of the war years waned, Soro’s past became a political drag on Ouattara and a threat to Côte d’Ivoire’s fragile democracy.
Ouattara still came to the rescue of his former ally when his government refused to comply with two warrants issued for Soro’s arrest. One came from a French judge in December 2015. The other was requested by the government of neighbouring Burkina Faso in January 2016.
When Ouattara took institutional, political and judicial steps to distance himself from his former associate in late 2016, attitudes towards Soro began to change. The adoption of a new constitution provided further grounds for weakening Soro’s grip on power.
But it was suspicions of Soro’s hand in the mutinies of January and May 2017 which marked the point of no return. He was now perceived as a threat to Côte d’Ivoire. His finances and ties with wealthy benefactors quickly came under close scrutiny in the law courts.
Reluctant to accept Ouattara’s proverbial peace offering and endorse his selected successor, Amadou Gon Coulibaly, Soro cut all remaining ties with the president. He resigned from the ruling party and from the speakership of the National Assembly in February 2019. Without Ouattara’s backing, he became a viable target for international prosecution.
Explosive Match
President Alassane Ouattara, who is seeking a disputed third term in office, said bluntly this month: “Soro, like Gbagbo, was excluded because he has a criminal record.”
In an interview published on Thursday 24 September by the popular Paris Match magazine, Ouattara told reporters: “Each of them are perfectly aware that their candidacies are based on provocation … Guillaume Soro doesn’t deserve to be on the campaign trail but in prison.
“This young man, drunk on money and power, has simply lost his head,” he said.
Nana Abena Boakye-Boateng
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