Their last handshake dates back more than ten years: Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara and his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo are due to meet on Tuesday, July 27, a first since their duel in the 2010 presidential election which led to a violent crisis.
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After a first telephone contact at the beginning of July, this face-to-face meeting planned at the presidential palace in Abidjan should constitute one more gesture towards the appeasement of political life in Côte d'Ivoire, in the continuity of the return of Laurent Gbagbo in the country on June 17.
"Laurent Gbagbo is in a spirit of openness, dialogue and reconciliation,"
told AFP Franck Anderson Kouassi, spokesperson for the Front populaire ivoirien (FPI), Laurent Gbagbo's party.
"He cannot rule out any meeting whatsoever with a major player in politics, it is in line with our frame of mind to meet President Ouattara"
, 79, he adds.
"It's a courtesy visit to his elder
(...)
if it can help ease the political atmosphere, so much the better"
, commented for his part Justin Katinan Koné, spokesperson for Laurent Gbagbo, 76, however calling
"not to give more depth to this meeting than it has"
.
"There has never been an interruption in the dialogue in our country and it will continue because this is the will of the government," said government
spokesman Amadou Coulibaly.
The camp of the incumbent president interprets this meeting as recognition of the legitimacy and legality of Alassane Ouattara by Laurent Gbabgo.
It is symbolically very important.
"
Rodrigue Koné, political analyst
Since the return of Laurent Gbagbo, acquitted by international justice of crimes against humanity, the word reconciliation is on everyone's lips. However, it is not obvious, as the history between the two men remains intimately marked by the post-electoral violence of 2010-2011. This crisis born from the refusal of Laurent Gbagbo, in power since 2000, to recognize his defeat in the presidential election to Alassane Ouattara has left more than 3,000 dead. Definitively acquitted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), Laurent Gbagbo was able to return to Côte d'Ivoire thanks to the green light from his former rival, always in the name of
"national reconciliation"
.
The government had also hinted that it would not apply Laurent Gbagbo's sentence to twenty years in prison for the “robbery” of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) during the events of 2010- 2011.
Read also: Ivory Coast: three leaders for a single presidential chair
“The two protagonists of the crisis will meet, this is not completely trivial! The meeting will not erase the abysmal differences between them, but it is an evolution of this relationship: the face-to-face is a resumption of speaking live, ”
underlines the political analyst Rodrigue Koné. According to him, the camp of the incumbent president
“interprets this meeting as recognition of the legitimacy and legality of Alassane Ouattara by Laurent Gbabgo. In such a visible and official way, it had not yet been recorded. It is symbolically very important ”
.
However, it is difficult to imagine Laurent Gbagbo remaining discreet in the Ivorian political game. Since his return, he has already asserted himself as a leading political opponent of Alassane Ouattara. Very quickly, he had gone to meet Henri Konan Bédié, another former president, now a heavyweight in the opposition and he had not failed to scratch Alassane. Ouattara. He had notably called on him to
“respect the texts”
, in reference to his re-election in 2020 for a controversial third term, during a presidential election boycotted by the opposition which deemed this new term unconstitutional.
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