Paul Mary
West Africa Analyst
Reuters
Even a stellar international business career cannot prepare you for the harsh reality of Ivory Coast politics. There, they question the democratic confidence of many of the world’s cocoa and the West African countries, most famous for being a producer of its best football players.
That’s a painful lesson Tidjane Thiam is learning as he waits to see if trading in the corridors of electricity and popular pressure from the streets can save his bid to become the president of the Ivory Coast.
The seemingly merciless progress towards this October election was suspended on April 22 when the 62-year-old decided he had lost his Iborian citizenship after he took French citizenship decades ago and didn’t cancel it until too late to compete in this year’s poll.
After more than 20 years in global finance in 2022, he returned to Ivory Coast in 2022, where Tiam was soon considered a potential competitor to replace current head of state, Aracen Oattala.
A master of traditional noble family members and the great nephew of Felix Houhu Bonnie, the country’s respected founder, he was impressed as the top official and minister of the government in the 1990s, overseeing infrastructure development and fundamental economic reforms.
The military coup then pushed Tiam to seek a fresh career abroad. This was culminated in a high-profile stint as CEO of British insurance giant Prudential and CEO of banking group Credit Switzerland.
However, three years ago, he finally made a steady progress towards the next Koiboria presidential election.
After the death of former President Henri Conan Bedier in 2023, longtime leader of the Ivory Coast opposition Democrats (PDCI) Henri Conan Bedier said that Tiam was fully erected in his place, and on April 17th this year he was selected as a candidate for the upcoming presidential election.
That wasn’t a guarantee of victory. Especially when the highly plausible Ouattara chooses to enter its fourth term, it is supported by all the assets and benefits of its incumbent, and its four-year track record of annual economic growth over 6%.
However, Tiam stood out as a major replacement.
AFP
President Ouattara congratulates Sebastian Harra of France after scoring the goal that won the Africa Cup of Nations Of Nations title last year.
As an opponent of the Houpouëtists’ Domination Assembly for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), he offered Ivorian voters the opportunity to change government.
However, his centralist politics and solid technocratic state of confidence have provided his candidacy with peace of mind to continue the impressive economic advances Ouattara has been piloting since 2011.
Potential trajectories were blocked. If a court decision exists – and if IVORIAN law does not provide an option for appeal against this particular issue, Thiam will be removed from the October contest.
This is a race in which past court convictions have already ruled out three other prominent opponents – former President Laurent Gubagbo, former Prime Minister Guillaume Solo and former Minister Charles Bret Gaudé – are all central actors in political crisis and civil conflict that cruelly portrayed progress on the ivory coast between 1999 and 2011.
The current outlook is that Ouattara or a selected candidate for RHDP succession will approach elections without facing heavyweight political challenges.
It only deepens the already widespread disillusionment of the Iborians with the political establishment of the country.
This goes against the broader context of West Africa, where radical anti-political rhetoric of soldiers who seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, already finds a sympathetic audience among many disillusioned youth.
It is really important in a society where, typically three-quarters of the population are less than 35.
AFP
The economy of Côte d’Ivoire, considered a regional powerhouse, is growing and has recovered well under Oatala from the devastation of the recent civil war.
In this crisis towards West Africa’s democracy, there was a moment of encouragement.
Incumbent governments were voted in Liberia in 2023 and Senegal and Ghana last year.
The results in Senegal in particular owed much to a massive, enthusiastic mobilization of young people.
Many wanted Ivory Coast to provide a more positive example of democratic choice and offering change, and even more influential as it is a great power in the region where the country is thriving.
It is the economic engine of the single currency bloc of CFA francs and, in addition to the cocoa industry, it is also a key hub for business services and finance, and the economic community of West African countries (ECOWAS), the leading political voice of regional groups.
What happens in Ivory Coast is really important, is widely noticed throughout West Africa, and is actually more common across French-speaking Africa.
Ouattara is one of the continent’s most prominent politicians and orders widespread international respect.
Yet, now the return version of identity politics, which has exacerbated the fierce conflicts and instability of the 1990s and 2000s, is engulfed with the stages of the country’s important next presidential election.
At the time, the first Bedier and Gubagbo governments used the controversial “Iboilite,” meaning “Iboilite” law, to keep Outara out for the presidency where his family is said to have foreign origins.
It was the first time the government abolished the ban on his candidacy in 2007, and only when he was already in office in 2016, the new constitution ultimately ended the requirement that the parents of the presidential candidates be native-born Iborians.
AFP
President Ouattara (L) has reconciled with Laurent Gbagbo since post-pol unrest in 2011, but his predecessor is forbidden from seeking an office again
The toxic mobilization of identity issues has been a major contributor to Civil War, street violence and Northern separatist parties, damaging the ivory coast at the expense of thousands of lives over the decade to 2011.
Today, the country feels far from such a massive conflict.
There is no general desire for return to conflict, and politicians continue to move far enough away from past burning Cen rhetoric.
But Thiam Saga shows how the issue of identity, even in a more legitimate form, can be heavier in this more peaceful era.
Coast Ivory allows dual citizenship only under certain limited conditions.
So, in a ruling on April 22, the Abidjan court declared that, after several years of research in Paris, he automatically lost Koiboria’s citizenship when he acquired French citizenship almost 40 years ago, under the conditions of a small amount of law after independence.
He officially surrendered in February this year, thus automatically reclaiming his former citizenship, which was too late to wrap around the registration of eligible voters or candidates this year.
Tidjane Thiam told the BBC:
In vain, his lawyers had claimed through his father that Tiam had French citizenship since his birth.
Aiming to highlight the absurdity and contradiction of the situation, he argued that the country should now pull back the 2024 Africa Cup of Nations football title.
“If the law is applied [that] They just applied it to me, we have to return the cup to Nigeria – because half of the team was not Koiborian,” he told the BBC.
And Thursday was able to bring yet another set-off to court hearings where a judge could rule that Tiam could not lead the PDCI as a non-state.
The past two weeks have continued political and legal debate over this entire story, with Tiam Camp hoping that the combination of popular pressure and careful political negotiations will lead to a compromise that will likely return to the presidential election, along with other excluded candidates.
And if he chooses not to run, he may want to secure his international reputation by intervening in some kind of deal that will protect his impressive track record and allow Tiam to run.
There will be a few months before the vote, so there is still time for that. But no one relies on it.
Paul Mary is a consulting fellow for the Africa Programme at Chatham House, London.
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