Former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, deregistered from the electoral list, said on Thursday June 8 that he would not let his name be “dirty” as he filed an appeal to be registered and vote in the local elections scheduled for June 2. september. “No, no and no, I won’t let my name be smeared without a fight.” I’m still standing ! “, he hammered in a statement to the press, after having filed an appeal in person in an office of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI), in Abidjan.
While Mr. Gbagbo was acquitted by international justice of crimes against humanity committed during the bloody post-election crisis of 2010-2011, he remains under a 20-year prison sentence in Côte d’Ivoire. for the “robbery” of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) in 2011.
The political climate has become tense again
This conviction, pronounced in 2018 while he was imprisoned in The Hague, had led to the forfeiture of his civic and political rights and therefore his removal from the electoral lists. “They didn’t put my name on the electoral list on the pretext that I was convicted after a trial because I allegedly robbed the BCEAO. I vigorously refute such an accusation,” the former president said in a 15-minute statement.
Mr. Gbagbo has put forward several arguments to request his re-registration on the lists and in particular the fact that, according to him, he was never summoned for his trial, nor notified of the judgment pronounced in his absence. “I was president from October 2000 to April 2011. You don’t judge a former president just anyhow before any court,” he added.
He also called on current President Alassane Ouattara and Henri Konan Bédié, another former head of state (1993-1999) still alive, to leave “a peaceful Côte d’Ivoire to the younger generations”. “The time for kicking is over,” he said. Appeals to the CEI are possible until Saturday.
After several signs of appeasement – ??calm legislative elections and the return of Mr. Gbagbo to his country in 2021 – the political climate has become tense again in recent weeks. Some eight million voters are called to the polls on September 2 in Côte d’Ivoire to renew the municipal and regional councils. The next presidential election is to be held in 2025.
