Ivory Coast’s former first lady Simone Gbagbo on Saturday announced she would run for president in 2025, vowing to build a new and improved version of the west African nation.
Nicknamed the “Iron Lady”, Gbagbo is the ex-wife of former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, the first former head of state to face trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. The tribunal in The Hague subsequently acquitted him.
“I have agreed to be a candidate in the presidential election of October 2025,” Gbagbo told her political movement’s first convention in Moossou, near the economic capital Abidjan.
“Because I deeply believe that every Ivorian, whatever their condition, is capable, if they really want to, of transcending all kinds of hardship in order to dream, to create, to build and to succeed,” the 75-year-old added.
“I would like to make you a bold offer: that of building an Ivory Coast that is totally transformed, modernised and prosperous, in an Africa that is free of complexes, developed, equipped, indispensable, strong and respected by all.”
Gbagbo was arrested at the same time as her husband in April 2011 following a bloodbath triggered by Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to concede defeat in a 2010 election.
Pitting Gbagbo against longtime rival and current President Alassane Ouattara, that crisis left some 3,000 people dead.
In 2015, Simone Gbagbo was sentenced to 20 years’ jail on charges of undermining state security, before benefitting from an amnesty law in the name of national reconciliation in 2018.
Were Laurent Gbagbo not ineligible to run due to a two-decade jail sentence for his role in the looting of a bank, Simone Gbagbo, representing the Movement of the Capable Generations, would be facing off against her former spouse.
Their divorce, which Laurent Gbagbo requested on his return to Abidjan in June 2021 following his acquittal by the international tribunal, was officially granted in 2023.
Besides the estranged Gbagbos, former prime minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan and ex-trade minister Jean-Louis Billon have likewise declared their tilts at the presidency.
Incumbent Ouattara is yet to indicate whether he will seek a fourth term.