Côte d’Ivoire: Former President Laurent Gbagbo proposes creation of a new party

Former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, founder of the divided Ivorian People’s Front (FPI), proposed on Monday the creation of a new political party, according to a FPI statement issued after a meeting of its leadership.

Mr. Gbagbo denounced during this meeting “the behavior” of his former Prime Minister, Pascal Affi N’Guessan, president of the so-called “legal” FPI, with whom he “does not intend to engage in a legal battle” and “therefore proposes the creation of a new instrument of struggle in line with our ideology and our ambitions,” the statement said.

The FPI, “our only instrument of political struggle is confiscated by Mr. Affi N’Guessan and despite the many initiatives to reason with him, he stubbornly clings to his so-called ‘legality’,” added Laurent Gbagbo, according to the statement.

Mr. Gbagbo, “took note of the will and obstinacy of Mr. Affi N’Guessan to take hostage the FPI, thus trampling on the years of sacrifice made by the party’s activists.

Several attempts to bring Gbagbo and Affi N’Guessan together have failed and last week, upon learning of Gbagbo’s convening of the party’s leadership, the “legal” FPI said in a statement that, “although a founding member of the party,” Laurent Gbagbo “is not the current president of the FPI.