The Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix (RHDP) won the majority of Ivorian town halls and regional councils, after the double election on Saturday, according to the Independent Electoral Commission which proclaimed the final results on Monday, September 04, 2023.

It is a tidal wave in favor of the Gathering of Houphouëtistes for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), the party of the president of Alassane Ouattara after the municipal and regional elections of September 2, 2023. The party obtained 125 municipalities out of 201 and 25 regions out of 30. We remember the victory of Prime Minister Patrick Achi, in the Mé, that of Mamadou Touré, the Minister of Youth in Haut-Sassandra; the victory of Anne Ouloto, the Minister of Public Service, in the Cavally (west), that of the minister Director of cabinet of the presidency, Fidèle Sarrassoro in the Poro (north).

The two main opposition parties, the African People’s Party-Côte d’Ivoire (PPA-CI) and the Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), allies in many localities, are gaining a region, Nawa, and ten communes like Lakota and Bloléquin. Although it has fewer communes compared to the 2018 election, the PDCI of Henri Konan Bédié remains in its fiefs: Yamoussoukro, Daoukro, Toumodi, the Iffou region or in Aries. Outside the alliance, Laurent Gbagbo’s PPA-CI gained two communes.

“Acceptable” Participation
The Ivorian Popular Front loses Moronou, the stronghold of Pascal Affi N’Guessan and comes out of this double election without any elected representatives.

The turnout remains substantially the same in the 2018 elections: it amounts to 44.61% for the regional election and 36.18% for the municipal elections. A rate that the President of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) considers “acceptable”.

Still removed from the electoral list three months before the local elections, Laurent Gbagbo tabled on Thursday, June 8, 2023 an appeal to the Independent Electoral Commission. Acquitted by the ICC of crimes against humanity committed during the 2010-2011 post-election crisis, he remains under a 20-year prison sentence in Côte d’Ivoire for the “robbery” of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) in 2011. Pardoned by the presidency, but not granted amnesty, he is still deprived of his civil rights.

Laurent Gbagbo visited the office of the Abidjan Independent Electoral Commission in a small committee. The PPA-CI activists had been ordered not to move, and respected it.

The former president personally signed his appeal to the CIS. Before going out to make a statement to the press. He went back on his conviction by the Ivorian courts in the case of the BCEAO’s “robbery” in 2011, an accusation he says he “strongly refutes”.

I don’t know why I was judged. No one summoned me because in order to have a trial, the accused is summoned and given a summons where he resides. Everyone in the world knows where I was living at the time of this trial. I was at the ICC!”

Laurent Gbagbo ended his speech with a call for peace. “The time for the blows is over,” he argued, before urging Henri Konan Bédié and Alassane Ouattara to work together to “leave the younger generations a peaceful Ivory Coast.” But he won’t give up his civil rights, he promised, concluding, “I won’t let my name get dirty without a fight.”

The Criminal Court of Abidjan on Wednesday sentenced to life imprisonment four accused of the jihadist attack in the seaside town of Grand Bassam in Côte d’Ivoire, which killed 19 people in March 2016, including Europeans.

The court found the four accused present at the hearing “guilty of the charges against them and sentenced them to life imprisonment,” said Justice Charles Bini.

The court followed the indictment of Public Prosecutor Richard Adou, who had asked for life a week ago.

The four defendants present, Hantao Ag Mohamed Cissé, Sidi Mohamed Kounta, Mohamed Cissé and Hassan Barry, were accused of having been complicit in the attack by helping those considered to be his brains – absent from the trial – in particular in locating the premises, which they denied.

An international arrest warrant has been issued by the Court against Kounta Dallah, presented as the operative mastermind of the attack.

On 13 March 2016, three young assailants had climbed the beach of Grand-Bassam, frequented by foreigners, then stormed several restaurants, firing at the Kalashnikov on guests on the terrace before being shot dead by Ivorian security forces.

Claimed by the Al-Qaeda branch in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi), this jihadi attack, the first in Côte d’Ivoire, killed 19 people, including four French.

Nine Ivorians, a Lebanese, a German, a Macedonian, a Malian, a Nigerian and an unidentified person were also killed in the attack and 33 people of various nationalities were wounded.

Source: SenegalActu