2025 presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire: Simone Ehivet finally responds to Laurent Gbagbo’s exclusion
Four days before the presidential vote on October 25, 2025, Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, 76, breaks her silence. In an interview with Jeune Afrique, the former first lady, running for the presidency for the first time, strongly criticizes the exclusion of her ex-husband, Laurent Gbagbo, from the presidential race.
“I hadn’t planned to be a candidate”, she says. Her commitment stems, she says, from a conviction: “The political project we were supposed to carry out for this country is not finished.” But the sidelining of Laurent Gbagbo, convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison for embezzlement of public funds and stripped of his civil rights, was the trigger. A decision she calls “deeply unjust”.
Simone Gbagbo believes Alassane Ouattara could have ended this situation by passing an amnesty law. Failing that, she says, the country remains prey to popular anger and political tensions: “There are his people in the streets, tensions are rising.”
Since her release, the former first lady has advocated for national reconciliation, a process she considers still unfinished. She calls for a “patriotic pact” based on forgiveness, the return of looted property and a tribute to the victims of the 2010-2011 conflict. “In prison, I learned to forgive, even Alassane Ouattara”, she says.
Asked about possible alliances within the left, she is cautious: talks with the PPA-CI, her ex-husband’s party, are “not progressing much”. As for her relations with President Ouattara, they are limited to the bare minimum.
Keen to avoid another post-electoral crisis, Simone Gbagbo laments the lack of reforms before the vote: “No political dialogue, no reform of the CEI, nothing has been done to calm the atmosphere.” And she concludes, fatalistic: “They just had to let Laurent Gbagbo run. If he is loved, he wins. If he isn’t, he loses. That’s democracy.”
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