In Côte d’Ivoire, the presidential candidacies of Guillaume Soro and Laurent Gbagbo in October were invalidated on Monday by the Constitutional Council, which however approved those of Alassane Ouattara, the outgoing president, and Henri Konan Bédié .
The candidacies of Guillaume Soro, former rebel leader and former Prime Minister, and former President Laurent Gbagbo were deemed inadmissible on Monday September 14 by the Constitutional Council in view of the Ivorian presidential election scheduled for October 31. The body however validated the candidacy of Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara for a controversial third term .
The Constitutional Council has validated only four of the 44 presidential candidacies. In addition to that of Alassane Ouattara, those of former President Henri Konan Bédié, Pascal Affi N’Guessan, former Prime Minister under the presidency of Laurent Gbagbo, and MP Kouadio Konan Bertin, dissident of Henri’s party were accepted. Konan Bédié.
The Constitutional Council did not follow the requests of several opponents who felt that Alassane Ouattara could not serve a third term, the Constitution limiting the number of terms to two. The Council stressed that the change of Constitution in 2016 was not “a revision” and instituted a “Third Republic” and that in the absence of special “provisions”, President Ouattara could indeed stand.
Rejected because condemned by justice
The Court unsurprisingly rejected the candidacies of Laurent Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro, both of whom were condemned by the Ivorian courts. Laurent Gbagbo, 75, who has never yet spoken publicly on his candidacy, is still on parole in Belgium, pending a possible appeal before the International Criminal Court (ICC), which acquitted at first instance of the charge of crimes against humanity. But he is under a sentence in January 2018 to 20 years in prison by the Ivorian justice for the so-called “Bank robbery of the BCEAO”, the Central Bank of West African States, during the 2010-2011 crisis.
The court also stressed that Laurent Gbagbo’s application file did not include a declaration signed by him making an application.
Guillaume Soro was sentenced in April to 20 years in prison for concealment of embezzlement of public funds.
Monday morning clashes
Monday morning, while the decision of the Constitutional Council was not known, demonstrations and marches against the candidacy of Alassane Ouattara ended with clashes with the police, in several towns in Côte d’Ivoire.
In Yopougon, a large working-class district of Abidjan, demonstrators notably set a bus on fire, while clashes between police and young people during the morning. In Bangolo (Center-West), after a march, “demonstrators” set fire to “a” mining truck and “vehicles”. They “were dispersed by the gendarmerie with tear gas,” a resident told AFP. Dams, dismantled by the police, tried to block several roads in the West, according to witnesses.