Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council has approved former First Lady Simone Gbagbo, 76, as one of five candidates for the 25 October presidential election, a surprise move that puts her on the ballot against incumbent Alassane Ouattara, 83.
The court barred ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, former prime minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan and ex-Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam. Thiam—disqualified over previous French citizenship—called the ruling “an act of democratic vandalism,” accusing authorities of engineering a “sham election.”
Ouattara took office in 2011 after Laurent Gbagbo’s arrest for refusing to concede the 2010 vote. A 2016 constitutional overhaul cleared the way for Ouattara’s 2020 re-election in a boycotted poll marred by unrest that left at least 85 people dead. He later said he would seek a fourth term.
Laurent Gbagbo was excluded due to a 2018 conviction for looting the central bank during the 2010-11 crisis. A 2020 presidential pardon did not restore his voting or candidacy rights. He was acquitted of separate crimes-against-humanity charges at the ICC.
Simone Gbagbo—long a polarizing figure and once dubbed “The Iron Lady”—emerges as the strongest woman ever to contend for the Ivorian presidency in a political landscape where women hold only about 30% of parliamentary seats. She and former minister Henriette Lagou Adjoua, representing the Political Partners for Peace coalition, are the two women cleared to run.
Her political résumé includes a term as MP and decades of activism, overshadowed by a 2015 20-year prison sentence handed down in Abidjan over the post-election violence that killed more than 3,000 people. She received amnesty in 2018; ICC charges against her were dropped in 2021. After splitting from the Ivorian Popular Front, which she co-founded with Laurent Gbagbo, she has rebuilt her base on a platform to “build a new nation” within “a sovereign, dignified, and prosperous Africa.”
“Her approval legitimises the idea that Ivorian women can aspire to the highest office,” said political analyst Severin Yao Kouamés. It is unclear whether Laurent Gbagbo, now disqualified, will back his ex-wife; the pair divorced in 2023 after more than three decades of political partnership.
The official campaign starts on 10 October. With 8.7 million registered voters, opposition exclusions have stirred doubts over the vote’s legitimacy and raised fears of renewed unrest—while all eyes turn to whether Simone Gbagbo can reshape the race.