ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Hundreds of Ivorians took to the streets in Abidjan, the capital of the West African nation, to protest in opposition to the exclusion of opposition leaders from the upcoming presidential election.
Ivory Coast, a nation of 32 million that’s the largest financial system of francophone West Africa, is because of maintain a presidential vote in October. Earlier this 12 months 4 foremost opposition figures, together with former President Laurent Gbagbo and former Credit score Suisse chief govt Tidjane Thiam, had been barred from running by the electoral commission.
Protesters gathered Saturday morning in Yopougon, a densely populated suburb of the capital Abidjan, holding banners with messages equivalent to: “Sufficient is sufficient!” and “No true democracy with out true justice.”
Gbagbo and Thiam joined forces earlier this 12 months to problem incumbent President Alassane Ouattara. The 83-year-old chief introduced final month that he would search a fourth presidential time period. His candidacy is contested after he modified the structure in 2016 to remove presidential term limits.
“We’re hundreds of thousands saying YES to Gbagbo and Thiam” mentioned one other banner within the crowd.
“We don’t desire a fourth time period, and we wish the electoral roll revised, that’s what we’re asking for,” mentioned Sagesse Divine, an activist who participated in Saturday’s march. “We wish all candidates’ names included, and we wish to go to the elections in peace, that’s all we wish.”
There was no speedy feedback from Ivorian authorities.
Thiam, president of the Democratic Celebration of Ivory Coast, won the party’s primary in an uncontested vote in April. Seen as Ouattara’s foremost rival, he has been barred from running on the grounds that he was nonetheless a French citizen on the time he declared his candidacy, though he later renounced his French nationality. Ivorian regulation bans twin nationals from operating for president.
Elections in Ivory Coast have normally been fraught with pressure and violence. When Ouattara introduced his bid for a 3rd time period, several people were killed in election violence.
Ouattara is the grand slam amongst a rising variety of leaders in West Africa who stay in energy by altering constitutional time period limits.
Ouattara justified his determination to run once more by saying that the Ivory Coast is going through unprecedented safety, financial and financial challenges that require expertise to handle them successfully.
Over the previous decade, teams linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have been spreading from the Sahel region into wealthier West African coastal states, equivalent to Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin.