The most important are Gbagbo's ex-wife Simone Ehivet Gbagbo or the two most prominent younger politicians: former youth minister Charles Blé Goudé (still living in the Netherlands after his acquittal on charges of crimes against humanity); or Guillaume Soro currently in forced exile in France but plotting his return...

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...

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...

Ouattara has positioned himself as a healer of wounds granting amnesty to hundreds of opposition supporters including Simone Gbagbo his predecessor's first wife (see Box A private party)...

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...

LiabilitiesThis leaves an alliance with former First Lady Simone Gbagbo who broadcasts her loyalty to the FPI but occupies no formal position in her husband's party...

In such a situation Ouattara does have the advantage of incumbency: as the current head of state he is the man with the power to grant amnesty – as he did for Gbagbo's wife Simone Gbagbo last August – or invite his predecessor to return home...

All this has brought the former First Lady Simone Gbagbo released on August 6 back under the spotlight...

Most likely the talk will have been on the status of the former First Lady Simone Ehivet Gbagbo...

His wife Simone Gbagbo was hastily convicted in Abidjan earlier this year and this month sees another trial this time against nine officers of Gbagbo's security forces accused of human rights abuses...

The FPI fundamentalists did not even wait a few days for the verdicts in the trials in Côte d'Ivoire of ex-First Lady Simone Gbagbo and her husband's top military commanders before sacking N'Guessan...