The former first lady of Côte d'Ivoire, Simone Gbagbo, launched her own political party in Abidjan, the Movement of Capable Generations (MGC), two years before the 2025 presidential election, AFP journalists noted on Saturday. .
Unsurprisingly, being the only candidate, Simone Gbagbo was elected president of the 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 Ms. Gbagbo, created last September, with the next presidential election already in its sights.
“
We are there, our political party is now in place
,” rejoiced Mrs. Gbagbo at the end of the general assembly, placing him resolutely in opposition to Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara.
According to her, the “
national reconciliation
” that he initiated “
never really started in a serious way
”.
The ambition of his "
humanist and progressive party, strongly rooted in social democracy
" and whose motto is "
Audacity, solidarity, sovereignty
", is "
to transform mentalities qualitatively
" in order to build "
a new and modern
,” she says.
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.
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.
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 have been on a separate trajectory since Laurent Gbagbo returned to Côte d'Ivoire 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.
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Laurent Gbagbo, aged 77, also created last October his own political party, the African Peoples' Party-Côte d'Ivoire (PPA-CI), to which Simone never belonged.
