Ivory Coast on Monday barred two top opposition leaders, ex-president Laurent Gbagbo and former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam, from next month’s presidential election in which President Alassane Ouattara is seeking a fourth term.
The constitutional council, tasked with drawing up the final list of candidates, retained five bids to contest the October 25 ballot but eliminated Gbagbo and Thiam on the grounds they have been removed from the electoral roll.
Thiam, leader of the largest opposition force, the historically dominant PDCI party, was removed from the electoral register in April over nationality-related legal issues stemming from him acquiring French nationality.
Gbagbo, head of the African Peoples’ Party – Ivory Coast (PPA-CI), was excluded because of a criminal conviction.
Both men, however, presented their formal electoral bids to try to unseat 83-year-old Ouattara.
“The Constitutional Council has consistently required the status of elector as a condition of eligibility,” its president Chantal Nanaba Camara declared, saying the two men’s candidacies were “inadmissible”.
Ouattara will face off against former first lady and Gbagbo’s ex-wife Simone Ehivet, former ministers Jean-Louis Billon, Ahoua Don Mello and Henriette Lagou, who was a candidate in 2015.
