Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara’s decision to run for a third term in October’s presidential election has triggered outrage from the country’s opposition.
Without surprise, the president’s RHDP party officially nominated him as a candidate during a convention in Abidjan.
Ouattara said last week that he would run after all, citing “a case of force majeure” after the death of his ruling RHDP party’s candidate Amadou Coulibaly “left a void”.
Simone Ouattara, second vice -president of the Ivorian Popular Front and wife of the former president Laurent Gbagbo said Ouattara’s candidacy was unacceptable.
Bedie has also said he and Gbagbo have agreed that their parties would back the other’s candidate in the event of a second-round runoff against Ouattara.
“It is worth recalling that the candidacy of Mr Alassane Ouattara is unconstitutional as we all know. Moreover, his candidacy violates the Ivorian Constitution, at least in spirit, as formulated by the authors of that text.” Simone Gbagbo told journalists at a news briefing.
His opponents say the two-term limit in the constitution bars him from running again, but Ouattara said his first two mandates do not count under the new Constitution adopted in 2016.
The Constitution limits presidents to two five-year terms. But a new constitution was adopted in 2016, which Ouattara and his supporters argue to have reset the clock, allowing him to run again -an interpretation strongly contested by the opposition.
Ouattara, an economist by profession, has been the President of Ivory Coast since 2010. He was the Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire from November 1990 to December 1993, appointed to that post by President Félix Houphouët-Boigny. He then became the President of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR), an Ivorian political party, in 1999.
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