And at Port Bouët beside Abidjan airport 900 French troops are based under a 2012 partnership agreement which came just after Paris helped President Alassane Ouattara's forces to victory over those of President Laurent Gbagbo in the unrest that followed the presidential election (AC Vol 52 No 18 Gbagbo: France's part in his downfall)...

The conditions for his return had been carefully negotiated as President Alassane Ouattara sought assurances from a man whose identity politics rhetoric used to mobilise southern youth behind then President Laurent Gbagbo at the height of the Ivorian national crisis (AC Vol 63 No 1 Après nous le déluge...

At this stage no one can rule out another contest pitting him against the other 'elephants' of Ivorian politics: former heads of state Henri Konan Bédié who will be 90 at the time of the next election and Laurent Gbagbo who will be 79 (AC Vol 63 No 1 Après nous le déluge...

This would allow Ouattara to close the door to any comeback for his two historic rivals Laurent Gbagbo and Henri Konan Bédié...

These three known as the 'elephants' are: Henri Konan Bédié who inherited the leadership of Houphouët-Boigny's Parti démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI) and succeeded him in power before being ousted in a 1999 coup; Laurent Gbagbo elected President in controversial 2000 polls following a short-lived period of junta rule; and current President Alassane Ouattara who came to power in 2011 following nine years of on-off civil war that saw the country split in two between north and south (AC Dispatches 23/7/21 The elephants talk reconciliation)...

Ex-President Laurent Gbagbo's Front populaire ivoirien (FPI) has splintered and its former leader helms a new party; President Alassane Ouattara's Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix (RHDP) is split over the succession; and Henri Konan Bédié's Parti démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI) is under strain as questions grow about the future of its veteran leader (AC Vol 62 No 13 Old foes re-enter the ring)...

FPI: Gbagbo remakes his old ruling partyLaurent Gbagbo quickly staked out a new political space for himself after returning from his decade of exile in June divorcing his wife of 32 years Simone Ehivet-Gbagbo and discovering that the new FPI leader Pascal Affi N'Guessan was not going to make way for him...

President Alassane Ouattara faces the most delicate of strategic choices following the triumphal return home last week of his career-long political foe Laurent Gbagbo after his final acquittal by the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity (Dispatches 21/6/21 Gbagbo's return poses big questions)...

A private party On 21 June former President Laurent Gbagbo moved to put a formal end to his 32-year marriage to the former First Lady Simone Ehivet Gbagbo with whom he founded the Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI) and was arrested with in dramatic fashion at the end of the siege of his residence in April 2011...

He was friendly with President Laurent Gbagbo in Côte d'Ivoire and built a new port there and when Gbagbo lost power in 2011 he quickly befriended Gbagbo's deadly enemy and successor President Alassane Ouattara...

Astute political observers say that unlike former president Henri Konan Bédié's Parti démocratique de la Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI) and former president Laurent Gbagbo's Front Populaire Ivoirien it is in fact only Ouattara's party – the Rassemblement des Houphouëtistes pour la Démocratie et la Paix (RHDP) – that has sought to look beyond the figure of the founder-president and make attempts at rejuvenation...

Out of the 255 seats up for grabs in the Assemblée nationale the party of President Alassane Ouattara's predecessor Laurent Gbagbo garnered just eight seats on its own and a further 50 in an uneasy electoral alliance with Henri Konan Bédié's Parti Démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI AC Vol 61 No 13 An 80s classic)...