Supporters rally for banned Ivorian opposition hopeful

Al Jazeera :

Despite a heavy downpour and slippery roads, supporters of presidential candidate Tidjane Thiam poured into Abidjan’s streets in the thousands on Saturday to march on the offices of the Ivory Coast electoral commission.
Decked in the white and green colours of Thiam’s main opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), the demonstrators chanted his nickname – “Thithi president!” – in a show of support for a candidate now officially barred from the vote. Placards reading “There’s no Plan B!” flew high amid protest songs.
“We strongly denounce the arbitrary and unjustified removal of President Thiam, as well as other major opposition leaders,” PDCI’s executive secretary, Sylvestre Emmou, one of few people allowed through a large police barricade to submit a complaint to the commission, told his soaked compatriots. “This is unacceptable and dangerous for peace and democracy in our country,” he said.
The protests highlight rising tensions in West Africa’s second-biggest economy, ahead of the October general elections that many fear could lead to violence in a country with still-fresh memories of the 2011 election-related civil war.
At stake is Ivory Coast’s continued stability amid a regional security crisis, but a likely fourth-term bid by incumbent President Alassane Ouattara has concerned many voters and political rivals, alongside what critics say is the government’s targeted ban on opponents.
Ouattara’s strongest challenger, Thiam, was struck from a final list of candidates on June 4 after the electoral commission said he was ineligible to run because he’d automatically lost Ivorian citizenship when he took French citizenship in the 1980s.
Although Thiam gave up his French nationality to regain his Ivorian one in February, a court ruled in May that he was not technically Ivorian when he enrolled in the electoral register in 2022.
Thiam’s supporters accuse Ouattara, who has led since 2011, of clearing the way for a fourth term. The last elections in 2020 were boycotted by the opposition, which argued Ouattara had reached his term limits, handing him an easy victory. In the 2015 elections, Ouattara was a clear favourite.