NEWS, Politics, West Africa

Cote d’Ivoire: First Lady for President

Posted by Europe correspondent on

Brussels 15.09.2025 Former Cote d’Ivoire First Lady Simone Gbagbo,76, emerged from a bunker where she was hiding in an attempt to avoid arrest to defiantly announcing she will run for top office. The controversial 76-year-old has called on supporters to help “build a new nation”.

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The event came to a spot light after the constitutional council excluded former president Laurent Gbagbo and opposition leader Tidjane Thiam from the October 25 presidential election. Both were removed from the electoral register – Thiam over nationality issues and Gbagbo due to a criminal conviction – clearing the way for president Alassane Ouattara’s bid for a fourth term.
Gbagbo, head of the African Peoples’ Party – Ivory Coast (PPA-CI), was excluded on basis of a criminal conviction.

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Both men, however, presented their formal electoral bids to try to unseat 83-year-old Ouattara.

“The Constitutional Council has consistently required the status of elector as a condition of eligibility,” its president Chantal Nanaba Camara declared, saying the two men’s candidacies were “inadmissible”.

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Ouattara will compete with the former First lady and Gbagbo’s ex-wife Simone Ehivet, former ministers Jean-Louis Billon, Ahoua Don Mello and Henriette Lagou, who was a candidate in 2015.

Formerly First Lady of Côte d’Ivoire between 2000 and 2011 and long regarded as the “power behind the throne” during her husband Laurent Gbagbo’s presidency, she had lived a turbulent political existance marked by conviction for attempting to undermine state security.

Sentenced to 20 years in prison, she was subsequently granted amnesty in 2018, having served only three years. Having recently founded a new political party—the Movement of Capable Generations (MGC)—she was designated as its candidate last year.

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