PREVIEW
Should the candidate’s ban be upheld, President Ouattara may face no credible challenger in October vote, raising concerns of violence.
Tidjane Thiam faces a judgement by the Constitutional Court this week on his application to be reinstated as a candidate for the presidential elections on 25 October.
A former chief executive of banking giant Credit Suisse, Thiam, who published a memoir of his political and banking career last week, insists he still has presidential ambitions despite the ban due to a dual nationality issue.
He filed his candidacy last month to run against President Alassane Ouattara, who is seeking a fourth term. Yet Thiam was not one of the 60 candidates approved by the Ivorian Constitutional Council, a number that included more than 30 independents.
In April, a court removed Thiam from the electoral register and banned him from contesting because when he registered as a voter in February he had French-Ivorian nationality, which bars him from the presidential race (AC Vol 66 No 9, Contest heats up as court blocks Thiam).
Days earlier the opposition Parti démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire had confirmed Thiam as their candidate. Defeat in court would shut them out of the elections. With the deadline for candidate applications having closed, Jean-Louis Billon, Thiam’s main rival for the PDCI nomination, would not be able to take his place.
The blocking of Thiam’s candidacy as well as that of former president Laurent Gbagbo, the leader of the Parti des Peuples Africains – Côte d’Ivoire, and former Gbagbo minister Charles Blé Goudé, has removed Ouattara’s key rivals and fractured the opposition (AC Vol 66 No 15, Unity on stage – but what happens after Ouattara?). Thiam and Gbagbo’s parties have formed a coalition though neither has a candidate approved to contest in October.
That has prompted concerns among civil society groups that an election stitch-up for Ouattara could lead to political violence not seen since Gbagbo was defeated by Ouattara in 2010. Last week, Ghanaian authorities announced that they had received 172 asylum seekers from Côte d’Ivoire in the second half of August.
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