Ivory Coast opposition leader and former Credit Suisse chief Tidjane Thiam has been excluded from the country’s final list of presidential candidates, rendering him ineligible to contest an October election, a party official said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Thiam\u00a0told Reuters\u00a0in April he would not drop his presidential bid despite a court ruling that his name be struck from the list due to his French nationality at the time of registration.<\/p>\n
The electoral commission’s decision risks reviving tensions in a country that emerged from more than a decade of civil war in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
The conflict was partly fuelled by disputes over nationality and electoral eligibility.<\/p>\n
Thiam, 62,\u00a0was elected\u00a0as leader of the PDCI, the main opposition party in the world’s top cocoa-producing nation, in December 2023.<\/p>\n
“My removal from the electoral roll by the Independent Electoral Commission is a sad but telling example of Ivory Coast’s abandonment of democracy,” Thiam said in a statement to Reuters.<\/p>\n
“We will fight, fight for democracy and peace in our country,” said Simon Doho, president of the PDCI parliamentary group.<\/p>\n
Other prominent politicians, including former president\u00a0Laurent Gbagbo\u00a0and his close ally\u00a0Charles Ble Goude\u00a0– both acquitted on charges of crimes against humanity related to the civil war – were also ruled ineligible for the October election.<\/p>\n
So too was former prime minister and rebel leader\u00a0Guillaume Soro, who was sentenced in absentia to life in prison in 2021 on charges of plotting a coup against his former ally, President Alassane Ouattara.<\/p>\n
Ouattara, who has served three terms, has not declared whether he’ll run in the election. His ruling RHDP party is scheduled to select its candidate on June 21 and 22.<\/p>\n
Thiam’s lawyer, Mathias Chichportich, said his client had filed a complaint on Tuesday with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.<\/p>\n
“This action seeks to compel the Ivorian state to take all necessary measures to ensure that the presidential election is held under fair, inclusive, and democratic conditions,” Chichportich said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ivory Coast opposition leader and former Credit Suisse chief Tidjane Thiam has been excluded from the country’s final list of presidential candidates, rendering him ineligible to contest an October election, a party official said on Wednesday. Thiam\u00a0told Reuters\u00a0in April he would not drop his presidential bid despite a court ruling that his name be struck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":11,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,27],"tags":[3964,407,1745],"class_list":["post-16473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-democratic-party-of-cote-divoire-pdci","tag-ivory-coast","tag-tidjane-thiam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}