Côte d’Ivoire’s red card policy is an objective for democracy after the ban by Tidjane Thiam

Even an international stellar international career cannot prepare you for the hard realities of politics in Côte d’Ivoire, where some people question the democratic references of the West African nation most famous for being the producer of a large part of the world cocoa and some of its best footballers.

This is the painful lesson that Tidjane Thiam learns when he waits to see if the agreement in the corridors of power and popular pressure on the street can save his attempt to become president of Côte d’Ivoire.

Apparently tireless incessant progress towards the elections for this October arrested a judgment on April 22, when a judge judged that the 62 -year -old man had lost his Ivorian citizen by taking decades of French nationality before and by reversing him only too late to qualify for this year’s vote.

Back on Côte d’Ivoire in 2022 after more than two decades in global finance, Thiam had immediately been considered a potential candidate to succeed the current head of state Alassane Ouattara who, at 83, is now in the last year of his third term.

A scion of a traditional noble family And a large nephew of the venerated venerator of the country, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, he had impressed as government representative and minister in the 1990s, supervising the development of infrastructure and radical economic reforms.

A military coup then pushed Thiam to seek a new career abroad, which led to high -level stays as director general of the British prudential insurance giant, then of the Swiss credit of the banking group.

But finally returning home three years ago, he embarked on a regular advance towards the next Ivorian presidential election.

After the death in 2023 of former President Henri Konan Bédié, long -standing chief of the Democratic Party of the Opposition of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), Thiam was perfectly positioned to take his place, then on April 17 of this year, he was chosen as candidate of the party for the next presidential race.

It was not a guarantee of victory, and especially if – as it seems completely plausible, Ouattara chooses to arise for a fourth term, supported by all the assets and advantages of employment and a history of four successive years of annual economic growth greater than 6%.

However, Thiam stood out as the main alternative.

As an adversarial of the rally rally of the Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), he offered Ivorian voters the opportunity to change their government.

However, with its centrist policy and its solid technocratic references, its candidacy offered a reassuring competence and the prospect of continuing the impressive economic progress that Ouattara has managed since 2011.

Now, this potential trajectory is blocked. If the court’s decision is – and the Ivorian law offers no appeal options for this particular question – Thiam will be outside the October competition.

This is a race from which convictions before the courts have already excluded three other eminent opposition personalities – former president Laurent Gbagbo, former Prime Minister Guillaume Soro and a former minister, Charles Blé Goudé – all the central actors in political crises and civil conflicts that brutally paralyzed the progress of Côte d’Ivoire between 1999 and 2011.

The perspective is now that Ouattara or any candidate of successor RHDP chosen will approach the elections without facing any heavy political challenge.

This can only like the already widespread popular disillusionment of Ivorians to the country’s political establishment.

This is contrary to the broader context of a West Africa where the radical anti-political rhetoric of soldiers who seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger already find a sympathetic audience among many young disenchanted.

This really counts in companies where, generally, three -quarters of the population are less than 35 years.

In the midst of this crisis for West African democracy, there have been some moments of encouragement.

In Liberia in 2023 and in Senegal and Ghana last yearThe outgoing governments were elected, in free and fair elections, the results of which were accepted by all the candidates without argument.

The Senegalese result, in particular, due to the massive enthusiastic mobilization of young people.

Many hoped that Côte d’Ivoire could offer another positive example of democratic choice and the supply of change, and an example that could be all the more influential because the country is a prosperous regional power.

It is the economic engine of the single CFA CFA CFA and, in addition to the cocoa industry, it is also a key center for commercial and finance services and a leading political voice in the regional group, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

What is happening in Côte d’Ivoire really counts and is widely noticed, through West Africa and, in fact, also in French -speaking Africa more generally.

Ouattara is one of the most important statesmen on the continent, also dominating broad international respect.

And yet, now, the prospect of the country’s next presidential election of the country has taken on a return version of the identity policy which has embarked on the litigation and the Amers instability of the 1990s and 2000s.

At the time, the governments of First Bédié and then of Gbagbo used the controversial law “ivoirité”, which means the “Ivorian” law to prevent Ouattara from standing for the presidency on the grounds that her family would have had foreign origins.

It was not until 2007 that the government canceled the ban on its candidacy and in 2016 – when it was already in office – that a new constitution finally ended the requirement that the declared parents of presidential candidates are Ivorians of indigenous origin.

The toxic mobilization of identity problems was a major factor contributing to civil wars, the violence of the street and the separatist partition of the North which brutally marked Côte d’Ivoire for more than a decade, until 2011, at a cost of thousands of lives.

Today, the country feels far from a large -scale conflict.

There is no popular appetite for a return to confrontation and politicians remain far from the incendiary rhetoric of the past.

But the Thiam saga shows how identity problems, even in a more legalistic form and, hopefully, the more peaceful era, can still weigh heavily.

Côte d’Ivoire only authorizes dual nationality under certain limited conditions.

Thus, in its decision of April 22, an Abidjan court said that, in the words of a little apparently used post -independence law, Thiam had automatically lost its Ivorian citizenship nearly four decades when he acquired French nationality – after several years of study in Paris.

Although he officially returned this in February, and therefore automatically recovered his original citizenship, it was too late for inclusion on the register of voters or eligible candidates for this year.

In vain, his lawyers had argued that, through his father, Thiam had French nationality from birth – which, if it was accepted, exempted it from the prohibition of dual nationality.

Seeking to highlight the absurdity and the inconsistencies of the situation, he argued that, logically, the country should now hand over its football title of the African Cup of Nations 2024 because many players also have French nationality.

“If we apply the law as (that) they applied me, we have to give the Cup to Nigeria – because half of the team was not Ivorian,” He said to the BBC.

And Thursday could bring another setback during a planned judicial hearing where a judge can now rule that Thiam cannot, as a non -national, lead the PDCI.

The last two weeks have seen a continuous political and legal debate on this whole saga, the Camp of Thiam hoping that a combination of popular pressure and discreet political negotiation will lead to a compromise which would allow him to resume the presidential race, perhaps with the other excluded contenders.

And Ouattara, if he chose not to run, might want to safeguard his impressive history and ensure his international reputation by intervening with a kind of agreement that allows Thiam to run.

With months before the ballot boxes, there is still time for that. But no one is on it.

Paul Melly is a member of the council in the Africa program in Chatham House in London.