Four prominent opposition figures in the Ivory Coast have been excluded from the final electoral list, according to the Electoral Commission, leaving them ineligible to contest pivotal October presidential elections in a nation with not-too-distant memories of civil war and coup attempts.
“My elimination from the electoral list by the Independent Electoral Commission [CEI] is a sad but eloquent example of Ivory Coast’s drift towards a total absence of democracy,” Tidjane Thiam, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), said in a statement on Wednesday.
Thiam’s statement came two days after CEI head Ibrahime Kuibiert Coulibaly announced that no revision of the electoral register would take place before the vote.
Thiam, who was widely seen as the main challenger to President Alassane Ouattara, was struck from the voter roll in April after a court ruled that he was not eligible to run for president because of his dual Ivorian-French nationality. Thiam, who was born in Ivory Coast, received French nationality in 1987 but renounced it in March.
Other major Ivorian candidates excluded from the vote include former President Laurent Gbagbo and his close ally Charles Ble Goude, who was charged with crimes against humanity related to the civil war.
The former prime minister and rebel leader Guillaume Soro is also barred. He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for organising a coup.
None of the four will be able to run in the October 25 presidential race or vote.
Ouattara, who has been in power since 2011, is included on the electoral register but has yet to announce if he will seek a fourth term.
In 2015 and 2020, Ouattara won with more than 80 percent of the vote.
Thiam has appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee, his party said.
His lawyer Mathias Chichportich said in a statement sent to the AFP news agency that depriving the opposition leader of “his political rights” was “a serious violation of Ivory Coast’s international commitments”.
Gbagbo’s African Peoples’ Party-Ivory Coast (PPA-CI) complained that the authorities “did not choose to listen to the advice, the calls for discussion, for reason”, its Secretary-General Jean-Gervais Tcheide told AFP.
“It’s a shame they chose to force their way through,” he said, adding: “We’re not going to let them do it.”
Other opposition figures who announced their plans to run for the presidency are featured on the final electoral list.
They include former First Lady Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, who, speaking on behalf of an opposition coalition, said that the conditions were not met for a “peaceful, calm election”.
During the 2020 presidential election, a revision of the electoral list took place in June ahead of the October polling day.
The final electoral register for this year’s ballot includes the names of 8.7 million voters, in a country with a high immigrant population and where nearly half of the 30 million inhabitants are under the age of 18.
Authorities deny any political interference in the electoral process, insisting that they respect decisions made by an independent judiciary.
