ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo vowed on Sunday to proceed in politics “till my demise” as he launched a brand new celebration following his acquittal by the Worldwide Prison Courtroom and return from a decade overseas.
Gbagbo, president from 2000-2011, returned to Ivory Coast https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ivory-coasts-former-president-gbagbo-flies-home-after-decade-exile-2021-06-17 in June after being acquitted in 2019 by the Netherlands-based court docket on struggle crimes costs for his position in a civil struggle sparked by his refusal to concede defeat in an election.
The creation of the brand new celebration, referred to as the African Individuals’s Occasion – Cote d’Ivoire” (PPA-CI), has fuelled hypothesis he intends to run within the 2025 presidential election. He declined to supply a definitive reply to that query on Sunday.
Gbagbo misplaced management of the celebration he based, the Ivorian In style Entrance, to a former ally whereas in jail for greater than seven years within the Netherlands, however he retains a big and dependable base of supporters.
The PPA-CI held its first congress earlier than hundreds of supporters who packed right into a lodge ballroom on the weekend within the industrial capital Abidjan.
“I’m going to practise politics till my demise,” Gbagbo, 76, mentioned to loud cheers throughout an hour-long speech that mixed defiance, humour and nostalgia. “There are folks older than I’m who practise politics.”
On the similar time, he prompt it was time for “the elders” to retire from lively electoral politics, a reference to himself in addition to to the present president, Alassane Ouattara, who defeated him in 2010, and former President Henri Konan Bedie.
Ouattara has additionally referred to as for energy to be handed off to a brand new technology after three a long time of nationwide politics dominated by the three males. Ouattara is 79 and Bedie is 87.
Ouattara ran for and received a 3rd time period final yr after the candidate he had designated to succeed him out of the blue died.
Ivory Coast, the world’s prime cocoa producer, has West Africa’s third-largest financial system and has seen among the world’s quickest financial progress over the previous decade.
The Worldwide Prison Courtroom discovered there was inadequate proof that Gbagbo was personally answerable for killings and different crimes dedicated by pro-government forces throughout the 2010-2011 civil struggle, during which greater than 3,000 folks died.
Gbagbo nonetheless faces a possible 20-year jail sentence that was handed down in Ivory Coast in November 2019 on costs of misappropriating funds from the regional central financial institution throughout the struggle. The federal government has not mentioned whether or not it plans to implement the decision, or whether or not Gbagbo will probably be pardoned.
(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Writing by Aaron Ross; Enhancing by Frances Kerry)
