Ivory Coast. "It's a warning": Opposition takes to the streets against Ouattara's fourth term

Thousands of opposition members demonstrated peacefully in Abidjan on Saturday morning to protest outgoing President Alassane Ouattara's bid for a fourth term and to demand the reinstatement of several opposition leaders on the electoral roll for the October 25 presidential election.

The demonstration was organized by the Common Front, composed of the two main opposition parties, the Democratic Party of Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI) and the African People's Party - Côte d'Ivoire (PPA-CI). Their two leaders, Tidjane Thiam and Laurent Gbagbo, were excluded from the presidential race by court decisions, the former for nationality reasons, the latter for a criminal conviction.

"We don't want a fourth term!" "We want Gbagbo and Thiam to run!" chanted the protesters as they marched along a major thoroughfare, waving Ivorian and party flags. "This is a historic mobilization that shows that the people of Côte d'Ivoire are standing up to intransigence," Noël Akossi Bendjo, vice-president of the PDCI, told the demonstrators.

"This is a warning; the government must understand us. We do not want a fourth unconstitutional term, and we demand that our leaders be reinstated on the electoral roll," added Sébastien Dano Djedje, executive president of the PPA-CI. The protesters then dispersed peacefully. "We demonstrated peacefully and in a disciplined manner. I am pleased that there was no disorder. This is a lesson in civic duty and patriotism," said Tidjane Thiam, who has been out of the country for nearly five months, in a social media post.

At the end of July, Alassane Ouattara, in power since 2011, announced his candidacy for a fourth term, asserting that the Constitution allows him to do so. Ivorian law provides for a maximum of two terms, but the Constitutional Council ruled in 2020 that with the new Constitution adopted four years earlier, the presidential term counter had been reset. This is something the opposition has always disputed.

In addition to Laurent Gbagbo and Tidjane Thiam, other opposition leaders are excluded from the race due to criminal convictions: exiled former Prime Minister Guillaume Soro and Laurent Gbagbo's former right-hand man, Charles Blé Goudé. The political climate remains tense less than three months before the election, particularly following the arrests in recent weeks of several members of the PDCI and PPA-CI.

The opposition denounces "kidnappings" and "harassment," while the authorities insist there are no "arbitrary arrests" in the country. Candidates are currently collecting the citizen sponsorships essential to participate in the election. They have until August 26 to submit their candidacies, before the Constitutional Council examines their validity.