The former Ivorian president launched his new party this weekend: “Parti des PeuplesAfricains – Côte d’Ivoire” (PPA-CI), of which he was elected president at the constitutive Congress in Abidjan. Laurent Gbagbo said that his ambition was to leave and that he was preparing his party to continue the fight. A party that wants to be socialist, sovereignist and that emphasizes pan-Africanism.
Since his arrival in Abidjan on June 17, acquitted by the international justice system which was trying him for crimes against humanity in the bloody post-election crisis of 2010, Laurent Gbagbo has never been far from politics.
A visit to the home of ex-president and former rival Henri Konan Bédié, a “reconciliation” meeting with the head of state Alassane Ouattara, and a definite break with his former prime minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan: he has been a fixture on the Ivorian political scene. “Let’s take on politics”, he said on July 10, during his visit to Mr. Bédié.
At 76, the former Ivorian head of state says he is preparing to hand over. He says he has worked to ensure that the new party, the PPA-CI, of which he has just been elected president, is an “instrument of combat” that will survive whatever happens. “In these times, after this journey, the wisdom is to prepare to leave. But I have decided that I will not leave abruptly.” The main difference with the FPI is that the PPA-CI will certainly be socialist and sovereignist like its predecessor, but will now be pan-Africanist. Laurent Gbagbo thus pre-empts a political current that has been left to small formations such as the Cojep until now. For the former Ivorian president, the scale of the states that emerged from independence is not adapted to the world that is coming.