In Côte d’Ivoire, the former first lady Simone Gbagbo, created her political party, two years before the presidential elections of 2025. She thus breaks politically with ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, with whom she had formed a formidable tandem in power for ten years.
It was no surprise that Simone Ehivet Gbagbo was elected president of the Movement of Capable Generations (MGC) with 100% of the votes by several hundred delegates from all over the country, during a two-day constitutive general assembly of the party, which ended Saturday.
Until its transformation into a political party, the MGC was a coalition of movements supporting Mrs Gbagbo, created last September, with the next presidential election already in its sights.
“We are there, our political party is now in place,” said Mrs. Gbagbo, wearing a green African cloth outfit, visibly happy, going so far as to dance a few steps with her supporters who affectionately call her “Mom.
She placed her party firmly in opposition to Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara. According to her, the “national reconciliation” that he initiated “has never really started in a serious way”.
She nevertheless thanked the head of state for having recently released two senior officers of the Ivorian army, imprisoned for their role in the bloody crisis of 2010-2011, recalling however that there remained “about twenty soldiers” in prison.
The ambition of her “humanist and progressive party, strongly anchored in social democracy” and whose motto is “Audacity, solidarity, sovereignty”, is “to qualitatively transform mentalities” to build “a new and modern Côte d’Ivoire”, she said.