Former Ivorian president Gbagbo to contest 2025 elections despite past imprisonment

FILE PHOTO: Ivory Coast's former president Laurent Gbagbo gestures during the second day of a meeting to launch the formation of a new political party at the Sofitel hotel in Abidjan, Ivory Coast October 17, 2021. Reuters/Luc Gnago/File Photo

Source: REUTERS

Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, has decided to run for president despite being barred from running for office following a 20-year prison sentence.

The former president of the West African nation from 2000 to 2011 agreed to contest in the 2025 Ivorian elections as the presidential candidate for the African People’s Party – Cote d’Ivoire (PPA-CI), a party he founded in 2021, spokesperson of the party Katinan Kone told Reuters on March 9.

Gbagbo, the first ex-president to stand trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague was acquitted in 2019 of all accusations of his involvement in a civil war sparked by his refusal to accept defeat in the 2010 Ivorian elections.

Following his years-long imprisonment in the Netherlands awaiting trial and his subsequent loss of leadership of the party he founded, the Ivorian Popular Front (IPF), Gbagbo made his way back to Ivory Coast in 2021 where he still faced a 20-year prison sentence in 2018 for holding up a bank.

French and UN forces intervened in the violent rioting that followed Gbagbo's refusal to stand down after Alassane Ouattara, the current president of Ivory Coast had defeated him in the 2010 elections.

His former adversary President Ouattara who was reelected in 2020 pardoned him in 2022, however, he was not granted amnesty and is ineligible to run for presidency in 2025.

Edward Sakyi