Ivory Coast Election - 2025 - President
The next presidential election was scheduled for October 2025. The law provided citizens the ability to choose their government in free and fair periodic elections held by secret ballot and based on universal and equal adult suffrage. Elections in September 2023 for the 201 municipalities and the 31 regions were considered free and fair, and all major political parties participated for the first time in approximately 10 years. Civil society organizations such as COSCEL-CI and CIVIS reported that these elections were generally well-run, with some challenges.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including censorship; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly; serious government corruption; and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons.
There were public and private radio and television stations. The government influenced news coverage and program content on some of them. Both independent journalists and journalists affiliated with the state-owned media reported they regularly exercised self-censorship to avoid sanctions or reprisals from government officials. The government appointed some managers of government-affiliated outlets. The National Press Authority (ANP), the government’s print media regulatory body, briefly suspended or reprimanded newspapers and journalists for statements it contended were false, libelous, or perceived to incite xenophobia and hate. Human rights organizations reported the threat of legal action had a chilling effect on media coverage of certain topics, and media often only published stories critical of the government after the same reporting had appeared in international publications.
Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said on 09 Janurary 2025 he wanted to continue serving his country as president, but stressed that his party had not yet made a formal decision on its candidate for this year's elections. Ouattara, 83, was re-elected to a disputed third term in 2020. He has previously said he wants to step down, but has also indicated he would need a commitment from old rivals to withdraw from politics as well. “I am in good health and eager to continue serving my country,” he said in a speech to the diplomatic corps in Abidjan, the strongest indication yet that he plans to run again.
In September 2024, the ruling party expressed support for Ouattara's possible candidacy in the 2025 elections, scheduled for October, but the nomination and formal acceptance had yet to take place.
Simone Gbagbo delivered a speech at the first congress of her political movement in Mosso, near the economic capital Abidjan, in which she announced her candidacy for the presidential elections. Simone was arrested at the same time as Laurent Gbagbo in April 2011, after a bloody crisis in the country following his refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the 2010 elections by current President Alassane Ouattara. The clashes between Gbagbo and Ouattara resulted in the deaths of about 3,000 people. In 2015, Simone Gbagbo was sentenced to 20 years in prison for undermining state security, but she benefited from an amnesty law passed in 2018 as part of national reconciliation efforts.
It is noteworthy that Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Côte d'Ivoire, was the first former head of state to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court on charges of committing crimes against humanity, before it acquitted him of these charges. Laurent Gbagbo's party has also announced its candidacy for the 2025 presidential election, but he is legally ineligible to run due to a 20-year prison sentence for "robbing" the Central Bank of West African States. In 2022, Alassane Ouattara pardoned him, sparing him prison time, but laws prevent convicts from running for election.
Laurent Gbagbo requested a divorce from Simone after returning to Abidjan in 2021 after being acquitted by the International Criminal Court, and their divorce became official in 2023.
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