Yesterday, the former president of Côte d'Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, visited another ex-president, Henri Konan Bédié (HKB), in his fortress of Daoukro. The activists of the FPI and PDCI parties found themselves in front of a… fundamental speech.
Under the sign of reconciliation, the first meeting - since Gbagbo's return to Ivorian soil - between the two strongmen of Ivorian politics took place yesterday in Daoukro. Henri Konan Bédié (HKB) and Laurent Gbagbo held hands for the first time since the return of the prisoner from the ICC.
A meeting for the general public for activists and executives of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) and their counterparts from the Democratic Party of Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI-RDA). The atmosphere was warm and the meeting was broadcast live on the internet. The alliance of Gbagbo and HKB is relatively recent, and their political history has seen ups and downs. Greatly absent from this reunion, the shadow of President Alassane Ouattara hovered over the event.
According to Antoni Garou, an activist of the FPI and deputy mayor of Ouragahio, “we cannot exclude it. It is an alliance for the good of Côte d'Ivoire ”. However, it does not seem that the two historical political leaders took into account Ouattara's feelings during this meeting.
First, Gbagbo gave a thirty-minute speech, during which he did not really reach out to Ouattara. He declared: “We must fight to be on the side of the Constitution, respect the texts! ". He also denounces the exclusion of the “Daoukro Sphinx” from the Ivorian political ecosystem. "Can I meet Henri Konan Bédié without it being politics?" Let’s assume we’re playing politics! ". Yet HKB has not always been Gbagbo's friend.
THE PRESIDENT'S RESIDENCE @HKBofficial to Daoukro READY TO WELCOME PRESIDENT LAURENT GBAGBO.#hkb#klg#CIV225 pic.twitter.com/yp0T1QjC2P
- FOFANA Hamed Ribah (@HamedRibah) July 10, 2021
HKB, Gbagbo and Ouattara, when will “reconciliation” be achieved?
A wind of change is therefore blowing on the relations between the PDCI-RDA and the FPI, which were more or less allied during the last legislative elections. A decade separates us from the time when HKB called Gbagbo "the originator" and advocated that he "be held to account". Bédié's party, the PDCI-RDA, took over from the FPI in its darkest times. However, HKB boycotted the 2020 election to denounce the unconstitutionality of Ouattara's candidacy.
Two years ago, HKB and Gbagbo met in Brussels, while the latter waited for his release to be confirmed by the ICC. They had then buried - definitely? - the hatchet. And in view of the plebiscite to which Gbagbo is the subject, his alliance with HKB could make it possible to create a big political movement. Gbagbo, well aware of this fact, announced what looks like a campaign slogan: “Bédié-Gbagbo, united for a stronger opposition”. In Abidjan, Gbagbo's vigorous statements will not fail to make people cringe.
Nevertheless, the two men qualified the rhetoric. Even if the lines of fracture between them and President Ouattara are more and more important. "Common friends" of Gbagbo and Ouattara try in vain, since June 17, to organize a tripartite meeting. Meanwhile, Ouattara can only scrutinize his best enemy, always more fleeting.. From a trip to his homeland of Mama, Gbagbo made a trip to the DRC, where he attended a wedding, the day before a private dinner with President Félix Tshisekedi.
Become a symbol of the struggle against imperialism, Gbagbo is still subject to a court decision, for the moment suspended but not canceled. The former president is sentenced to 20 years in prison for a case of embezzlement of BCEAO funds. A sword of Damocles that Ouattara lets hover, again and again, above Gbagbo's head, as if to better try to control the one who remains a rival.
The lord of war @AOuattara_PRCI stung an acute depression attack since the meeting of the sons of the country Laurent Gbagbo and HKB. He calls on his marabouts to break this new alliance: reconciliation in the name of mine. Nothing should stop this patriotic drive pic.twitter.com/hbXxp9ipUj
- Farafina Wamy (@FarafinaW) July 11, 2021