Ivory Coast: Laurent Gbagbo, the reasons for the creation of a new party
Laurent Gbagbo, June 17, 2021. AFP - SIA KAMBOU
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5 mins
Laurent Gbagbo wants to create a new political party so as not to have to engage in a legal battle with Pascal Affi N'Guessan.
Its former Prime Minister heads the legal wing of the Ivorian Popular Front.
It was this division that led to the sudden decision, but not surprisingly, as the internal schism at the FPI goes back several years already.
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Less than two months after
his return to Côte d'Ivoire on June 17
following his acquittal of crimes against humanity by international justice, Laurent Gbagbo caused surprise on Monday, August 9 by announcing that he wanted to create a new party. But for Laurent Gbagbo, abandoning a party, the FPI (Ivorian Popular Front) which he created in 1982 even before the years of multipartyism in African countries, is necessarily risky. It was under the FPI banner that Gbagbo built his status as a historical opponent until imprisonment, during the Houphouët-Boigny years. The FPI for him is not only a lifetime, but it is also an identity, a mark that he has lost since the Ivorian justice confirmed in 2015 Affi N'Guessan in his functions as president of the party.
2025 in the sights
This court decision prohibited Gbagbo's supporters, including
Aboudramane Sangaré, who died in 2018
, and Simone Gbagbo, from using the party's name and logo.
In fact, the FPI no longer belonged to its founder.
However, his supporters continue to speak of FPI GOR (FPI Gbagbo or Rien).
This is to say if the FPI brand is associated with the name of the former president.
But by choosing to create a new movement, he shows that he wants to overcome the legal-political conflict with Affi N'Guessan.
He leaves a mark steeped in history, it is up to him to find another name which will have to impress the spirits.
This is where there can be a risk of loss of notoriety, unless it creates a new dynamic.
Today, by creating a new party, the former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo also shows that he intends to remain at the age of 76 a major player in the political life of his country and to have a structure that is entirely his own, undoubtedly in the perspective of the presidential election of 2025.
What about Simone Gbagbo?
The former first lady was in the room on Monday when Laurent Gbagbo made public his intention to create a new party.
He also quoted it several times in his speech when he was doing the history of the party.
That said,
the personal
and sometimes political relations between these two personalities are often complicated, not to say conflicting.
Creating a new party means setting up new governing bodies and this could allow Laurent Gbagbo to clean up and marginalize a particular clan for the benefit of those closest to him, while remembering that Simone Gbagbo remains popular. with some of the militants. A faithful of the former president confided to us that "
there is no reason that Simone Gbagbo and her relatives are not associated
" with this new political adventure. But we must not lose sight of the fact that they also have
a private history
beyond politics.
On the FPI-legal side, it is estimated that Laurent Gbagbo "
has chosen rupture and division
".
He took a "
decision dictated mainly by the thirst for power and the desire for revenge,
" reacted Pascal Affi N'Guessan, president of FPI-legal.
The latter thus convened a meeting of the central committee of the party for this Saturday, August 14.
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Ivory Coast
Laurent Gbagbo