Is the red card politics of Ivory Coast is its own goal for democracy after the prohibition of Tidjane Thiam

Even an excellent international business career cannot be prepared for the harsh reality of politics in Ivory Coast, where some people question the democratic faith of the West African nation that are famous as the producer of a large part of the world’s cocoa and some of the best football players.

That is the painful lesson that Tidjane Thiam learns while waiting to see if deal can make the corridors of power and popular pressure from the street to become president of Ivory Coast.

Apparently ruthless progress in the direction of the elections set in October came to a judgmental stopping on April 22 when a judge ruled that 62-year-old had lost his Ivorian citizenship by taking French nationality decades earlier and not being too late to qualify for this year’s vote.

After more than two decades, Thiam went back to Ivory Coast in 2022 after more than two decades in Global Finance, was immediately seen as a potential competition to follow the current head of state Alassane Ouattara, which is now in the last year of his third term of office at the age of 83.

A scion of a traditional noble family And a great cousin of the respected founder of the country, Félix Houprouët-Boigny, he had made an impression in the 1990s as a top official and minister, who supervised the development of infrastructure and radical economic reforms.

A military coup then pushed Thiam to find a new career abroad, which culminated in high -profile stints as chief executive of the British insurance giant Prudential and then the Banking Group Credit Suisse.

But finally recurring, three years ago, he started with a steady progress to the next Ivorian presidential election.

After death in 2023 of former President Henri Konan Bédié, long -term leader of the opposition Democratic party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), Thiam was perfectly positioned to take his place and then on April 17 this year he was chosen as a candidate for the upcoming presidential race.

That was no guarantee for the victory, and especially if – as it seems that Ouattara chooses to run for a fourth term, supported by all assets and benefits of the incumbency and a track record of four consecutive years of annual economic growth above 6%.

However, Thiam noticed the most important alternative.

As an opponent of the prevailing meeting of Houthouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), he offered Ivorian voters the chance to change their government.

But with his central politics and solid technocratic references, his candidacy offered reassuring competence and the prospect to continue the impressive economic progress that Ouattara has placed since 2011.

Now that potential process is blocked. If the decision of the court is – and Ivorian law does not offer an option for this specific issue – Thiam will be outside the October competition.

It is a race from which previous convictions have already excluded three other prominent opposition figures – former President Laurent Gbagbo, former Prime Minister Guillaume Soro and a former minister, Charles Blé Goudé – all central actors in the political crises and civilian conflicts that brutally past 1999 and 2011.

The prospect is now that Ouattara or an elected RHDP -successor -candidate will approach the elections without taking on a heavyweight political challenge.

This can only deepen the already widespread popular disillusion of Ivorians with the political establishment of the country.

This is against the broader context of a West Africa, where the radical anti-politics rhetoric of the soldiers who have taken the power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger already find a sympathetic audience among many disappointed young people.

That is really important in societies where usually three -quarters of the population is less than 35.

In the midst of this crisis for Western African democracy, there have been a few moments of encouragement.

In Liberia in 2023 And in Senegal and Ghana last yearEstablished governments were voted on, with free and honest elections, the results of which were accepted by all participants without a fight.

The Senegalese result, in particular, much to thank the enormous enthusiastic mobilization of young people.

Many hoped that Ivory Coast could offer a further positive example of democratic choice and the supply of change, and an example that is perhaps all the more influential because the country is a prosperous regional powerhouse.

It is the economic engine of the CFA Franc Single Currency Bloc and in addition to the cocoa industry, it is also an important hub for business services and finances and a leading political voice in the regional grouping, the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAs).

What happens in Ivory Coast is really important and is generally noted, in West -Africa and indeed, also more generally in French -speaking Africa in general.

Ouattara is one of the most prominent statesmen of the continent and also has a broad respect international.

And yet the run -up to the crucial following presidential elections of the country is entangled in a return version of the identity policy that acidified the bitter disputes and instability of the nineties and 2000s.

At the time, the governments of the first Bédié and then Gbagbo used the controversial “Ivoirité”, which means “Ivorian-Horch” law to close Ouattara from standing for the presidency on the basis of the fact that his family reportedly had foreign origin.

It was only in 2007 that the government deleted the ban on its candidacy and only in 2016 – when he was already in office – that a new constitution finally ended the requirement that the explained parents of presidential candidates are native to Ivorians.

The poisonous mobilization of identity problems had been an important factor for the civil wars, street violence and northern separatist partitions that had been brutally with thousands of lives for more than a decade, until 2011.

Nowadays the country feels far from such a large -scale conflict.

There is no popular appetite for a return to confrontation and politicians stay far away from the burning rhetoric from the past.

But the Thiam Saga shows how identity issues, even in a more legal form and hopefully more peaceful era, can still weigh heavily.

Ivory Coast only allows dual nationality under certain limited circumstances.

So in his ruling of 22 April, an Abidjan court stated that, under the conditions of a little-used legislation, after independence, Thiam had automatically lost his Ivorian citizenship almost four decades ago when he acquired French nationality-after a number of years in Paris.

Although he officially surrendered that this is automatically reduced in February, and thus its original citizenship, this was too late for inclusion in the register of eligible voters or candidates this year.

His lawyers had argued in vain that Thiam had French nationality from birth by his father – who, if accepted, would exempt him from the dual nationality ban.

In search of the absurdity and inconsistencies of the situation, he argued that the country would logically now have to return its 2024 Africa Cup of Nations football title, because many of the players also have French nationality.

“If we apply the law such as (that), they have simply applied it to me, we have to give the cup back to Nigeria – because half of the team was not Ivorian,” ” He told the BBC.

And Thursday could still bring a setback to a planned hearing where a judge can now decide that Thiam cannot, if a non-national, lead the PDCI.

Over the past two weeks, a continuous political and legal debate over this entire Saga, where the Thiam camp in the hope that a combination of popular pressure and discreet political negotiations will lead to a compromise that leaves him back in the presidential race, perhaps together with the other excluded contenders.

And Ouattara, if he chose not to run, may want to protect his impressive track record and secure his international reputation by intervening with a kind of deal with which Thiam can run.

With months to go for the polls, there is still time for that. But nobody counts on it.

Paul Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa program in Chatham House in London.