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)...

Côte d'Ivoire has had one of the world's fastest-growing economies since Ouattara took over the reins from Laurent Gbagbo following the country's second civil war in 2011...

(The two men were confined to the same hotel almost a decade earlier while they waited for Laurent Gbagbo to be dislodged from power in April 2011)...

The same day police lifted the siege of the Bédié residence and those of the remaining CNT members including Assoa Adou exiled ex-President Laurent Gbagbo's right-hand man in Brussels...

Prime Minister Hamed Bakayoko however has reached to former president Laurent Gbagbo and he had a meeting with Assoa Adou...

Last week Ouattara talked of amending the constitution to impose an age limit on presidential candidates but that looks like a vindictive attempt to block off any political future for Bédié or former President Laurent Gbagbo before the latter is allowed to return home which Ouattara has promised to do...

But by doing this his opponents risk alienating Ivorian electors who have bitter memories of the six-month blockade and civil war that followed Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to acknowledge his United Nations-certified defeat in the 2010 contest...

Côte d'Ivoire is a key ally and trade market and Ouattara himself has been a trusted strategic support – in marked contrast to Laurent Gbagbo whose indulgence of populist nationalism stirred deep unease for successive French governments...