The two opposition parties excluded from the forthcoming presidential election in Ivory Coast have formed an alliance demanding to be allowed to participate in the polls.
The alliance aims to demand that its leaders, Laurent Gbagbo and Tidjane Thiam, be allowed to run in the next presidential election and that other opposition candidates be removed from the electoral lists. It mainly pits the PPA-CI and PDCI parties.
The creation of this opposition front comes in a tense political climate, marked by the exclusion of several prominent political figures. These exclusions, decided by the courts, have not eased tensions.
On the contrary, they have rekindled attention on the Ivorian political scene. Laurent Gbagbo even launched an “Enough is Enough” movement to oppose a possible fourth term for current President Alassane Ouattara in the October 2025 presidential election.
Faced with these movements, the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party downplays the opposition’s demands, calling them attempts to delay the electoral process. The RHDP insists that the exclusion decisions are purely judicial and not political.
Laurent Gbagbo, born May 31, 1945, is an Ivoirian educator and politician who became president of Côte d’Ivoire in 2000. During his presidency, he grappled with civil war and an extended period of disunity. After disputing that he lost an election in November 2010, he refused to step down, which led to a political crisis that threatened to reignite civil war.
Tidjane Thiam is an Ivorian businessman, and the executive chairman of Freedom Acquisition Corp. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Swiss bank Credit Suisse from March 2015 to February 2020. He was also the chief financial officer of British banking group Prudential from 2007 to 2009, and then its CEO until 2015. In 2019, Thiam became a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
On February 7, 2025, Thiam announced that he had renounced his French nationality in order to be eligible for the 2025 Ivorian presidential election scheduled in October. On April 18, 2025, he was unanimously nominated by the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast – African Democratic Rally (PDCI) to be its candidate in the upcoming election. However, On 22 April he was removed from the electoral roll, with a court saying that he had forfeited his Ivorian citizenship when he acquired French citizenship in 1987. Thiam has challenged this decision.
Additional sources: Africa News
