Is the Red Card Policy Cat -Dioire – this is the own goal of democracy after the Tidjane thiam ban

Even a stellar international business career cannot prepare you for the cruel realities of the ivory, where some question the democratic powers of the Western African nation, most famous for being the producer of most cocoa in the world and some of its best football players.

This is a painful Tidjane Thiam lesson when he expects to find out whether a transaction in the corridors of power and people’s pressure from the street can save their application for President Coast-D’Ivoire.

It would seem that the tireless progress against the elections set in October 22, on April 22, when the judge ruled that the 62-year-old boy had lost his citizenship Ivur, taking French nationality for decades and without canceling him to late to get the right to vote this year.

Returning to the ivory coast in 2022, after more than two decades in the world finance, TIAM was immediately regarded as a potential contender for the success of the current head of state Alason Wattar, who at the last year of his third term of office.

A bodies of traditional noble family And the great nephew of the respected founding president of the country Felix Hafuet-Bonya, he impressed as the chief government official and the minister in the 1990s, watching the development of infrastructure and radical economic reforms.

Then the military coup pushed Thiam to look for a fresh career abroad, which ended with high -profile results as CEO of the UK insurance giant, and then in the Credit Suis Banking Group.

But returning home, finally, three years ago, he began to advance to the next Ivarian presidential election.

After the death of former President Henri Konan Bedie, who had long served as the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of the Ivory Bone (PDCI), Thiam was perfectly busy to take his place, and then he was elected a candidate for the president’s future race on April 17 this year.

It was not a guarantee of victory, and especially when – as it seems quite plausible, ouattara decided to run on the fourth term, backed by all assets and preferences of problems and services of the next annual economic growth above 6%.

However, TIAM stood out as a major alternative.

As an opponent of the HouphouëTists ruling on Democracy and Peace (RHDP), he suggested that Ivur voters change his government.

However, thanks to its central policy and firm technocratic powers, its candidacy has proposed to assure the competence and perspective to continue impressive economic progress, which has been a pilot since 2011.

Now this potential trajectory is blocked. If the court’s decision is standing – and the law of the Ivory does not propose the possibility of addressing this particular issue – Thiam will leave the competition in October.

This is the race from which the previous court conviction has already been excluded by three other well -known opposition figures – former President Laurent Gbagbo, former Prime Minister Guillaume Syro and former Minister Charles Ble – all central subjects of political crises and civil conflicts that severely paralyzed the progress of the bone between 1999 and 2011.

Now the prospect is that Ouattara or any elected successor to the RHDP will approach the election without faced with a political challenge.

This can only deepen the already widespread disappointment with the country’s political establishment.

This is against the broad context of West Africa, where the radical anti-political rhetoric of soldiers who seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, already finds a sympathetic audience among many young people.

It really matters in societies, where usually three quarters of the population younger than 35 years.

Among this crisis, several points of encouragement occurred for the West African democracy.

In Liberia in 2023 and in Senegal and Ghana last yearThe current governments voted in free and fair elections, the results of which were adopted by all contestants without arguments.

In particular, the results of the Senegalians largely owed to the mass captured mobilization of the youth.

Many hoped that the ivory coast could offer another positive example of the democratic choice and the proposal of change, and an example that could be more influential because the country is a prosperous regional power plant.

It is an economic engine of the CFA Franc Single Monetary Block, and in addition to the cocoa -industry, it is also a key center for business services and finances and a leading political voice in the regional group, the West African economic community (Ecowas).

What happens on the ivory coast really matters and is widely noticed throughout West Africa, as well as in the whole of Francophone Africa.

Ouattar is one of the most famous Continent statesmen, who also spokes about widespread respect.

Nevertheless, in the run-up to the subsequent subsequent presidential elections in the country, the identity policy, which so ruined the bitter disputes and instability of the 1990s and 2000s, has become a reverse.

Then the governments first of the misery, and then the Gbagbo used the controversial “Ivirit”, which means the “Ivarian law” to close the Watter, standing for the presidency on the grounds that his family allegedly had foreign origin.

It was only in 2007 that the government refused to ban his candidacy and only in 2016 – when it was already in office – finally the new constitution finished the demand that the presidential candidates’ parents were native to Ivory.

The poisonous mobilization of identity problems was the main factor that contributed to civil wars, violence on the street and the northern separatist section, which brutally scared the ivory coast for more than ten years, by 2011, at the cost of thousands of lives.

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

There is no popular appetite for a return to confrontation, and politicians remain aside from the incendiary rhetoric of the past.

But Thiam Saga shows how problems with identity even in a more legistic way and in this, hopefully a more peaceful era, can still weigh.

Cat -Ivoire under certain limited conditions allows only double nationality.

Thus, within the framework of April 22, the Abejana court stated that, according to the terms of the small law after independence, TIAM automatically lost its citizenship Ivur almost four decades ago when he acquired French nationality-after many years of study in Paris.

Although he officially surrendered it in February, and thus automatically restored his initial citizenship, it was too late to include this year in the voter or candidates.

In vain, his attorneys claimed that through Tiam’s father was a French nationality from birth – that when he was accepted, he was released from a double ban on nationality.

Seeking to highlight the absurdity and inconsistencies of the situation, he claimed that the logical country should return its price 2024 Cup of Football Nations because many players also have French nationality.

“If we apply the law the way they just applied it, we must return the Nigeria Cup – because half of the team was not Ivarian,” – He said BBC.

And on Thursday, it can bring another failure in the scheduled court hearing where the judge can make the decision that TIAM could not, as an unnatural, lead PDCI.

Over the past two weeks, there have been constant political and legal discussions over this saga, and TIAM camp hopes that the combination of popular pressure and restrained political negotiations will lead to a compromise that will allow him to return to the presidential race, possibly with other excluded candidates.

And the Watter, if he decided not to run, can want to keep his impressive results and provide his international reputation, interfere with a deal that allows Thiam to work.

With months to go to the election, there is still time for that. But no one counts on it.

Paul had – a consulting officer of the African program at the Chatem House in London.