The former first lady of Côte d'Ivoire Simone Gbagbo, created her political movement on Saturday August 20, 2022, two years before the presidential election of 2025.

This political break with former President Laurent Gbagbo, with whom she had formed a formidable tandem in power for ten years.

follows a private rupture: Simone and Laurent Gbagbo are in the process of divorce, at the request of the latter.

Being the only candidate, Simone Ehivet Gbagbo was unsurprisingly elected president of the Movement of Capable Generations (MGC) with 100% of the vote by several hundred delegates from all over the country, during a two-day constituent general assembly of the party, which ended on Saturday.

Until its transformation into a political party, the MGC was a coalition of movements supporting Simone Gbagbo, created last September, with the next presidential election already in its sights.

"We are there, our political party is now in place", rejoiced Simone Gbagbo dressed in a set of African fabric in green tones, visibly happy, going so far as to sketch a few dance steps with her supporters who affectionately nicknamed "Mom".

"Qualitatively transform mentalities"

She placed her party resolutely in opposition to Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara.

According to her, the "national reconciliation" that he initiated "never really started in a serious way".

She nevertheless thanked the Head of State for having recently released two senior officers of the Ivorian army, imprisoned for their role in the bloody crisis of 2010-2011, recalling however that there remained "about twenty soldiers " in prison.

The ambition of his "humanist and progressive party, strongly anchored in social democracy" and whose motto is "Audacity, solidarity, sovereignty", is "to transform mentalities qualitatively" in order to build "a new and modern," she said.

Now 73 years old, the one who was nicknamed "the Iron Lady", formed a formidable tandem with Laurent Gbagbo when the latter was president from 2000 to 2011.

It was for their role during the bloody crisis – around 3,000 dead – which followed the 2010 presidential election and which arose from Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to recognize his defeat against Alassane Ouattara, that they were arrested in Abidjan in April 2011. .

She was accused of being linked to "death squads" against supporters of Alassane Ouattara.

Sentenced in 2015 in her country to 20 years in prison for "undermining state security", she benefited in 2018 from an amnesty law, in the name of "national reconciliation".

Laurent Gbagbo, also sentenced to 20 years in prison in Côte d'Ivoire for the "robbery" of the West African Central Bank during the 2010-2011 crisis, has just benefited from a presidential pardon which does not, however, erase his sentence, which could prevent him from running in 2025.

Simone Gbagbo regretted it on Saturday, believing that the pardon, instead of the amnesty which cancels the sentence, "further weighs down the socio-political atmosphere" in Côte d'Ivoire.

Arrest warrant lifted

In the wake of the acquittal of Laurent Gbagbo by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in March 2021 where he was prosecuted for crimes against humanity, the arrest warrant issued by this court against Simone Gbagbo, was survey.

But both privately and politically, they who fought together for a multiparty system in their country more than 30 years ago, have followed a separate trajectory since the return to Côte d'Ivoire of Laurent Gbagbo in June 2021, after his acquittal by the ICC.

Just returned after ten years of absence on the arm of another woman, he asked for a divorce from Simone, with whom he had two daughters.

Laurent Gbagbo, aged 77, also created his own political party last October, the African Peoples' Party-Côte d'Ivoire (PPA-CI), to which Simone never belonged and which was not represented in the general assembly of the MGC.

With AFP

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