Ivory Coast’s President Rules Out Running for a Third Term

(Bloomberg) --

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said he won’t seek re-election when his second five-year term ends later this year, ending months of speculation over whether he’ll extend his rule.

“I have decided to not be a candidate in the next election,” Ouattara, 78, told lawmakers Thursday in the capital, Yamoussoukro. “I have decided to hand over to the next generation.”

The world’s top cocoa producer is heading for a tense election in October after Ouattara’s ruling party, the Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace, split from its coalition partner -- ex-President Henri Konan Bedie’s Democratic Party of Cote d’Ivoire. The partners had argued over who should be their candidate in 2020.

While Ouattara previously said he was keen to hand over power, he still feared that his preferred successor, Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, could be defeated by an alliance between former rebel leader Guillaume Soro and Bedie, people familiar with the matter said in October.

Soro, 47, announced his candidacy last year while abroad. In December, the state prosecutor issued a warrant for his arrest after releasing a recording of a 2017 phone call in which Soro allegedly discussed a plot to overthrow the government. The warrant effectively prevents him from returning to compete in the election.

Thursday’s announcement will hand Ouattara “six months to prepare the field for his chosen successor,” Arthur Banga, an analyst at the University of Cocody in Abidjan, said by phone. Opposition parties are yet to announce their presidential aspirants, giving “the ruling party candidate an advantage while allowing Ouattara to exit through the front door.”

Ouattara won his first election in 2010, when he defeated then-President Laurent Gbagbo with the backing of Bedie. He wasn’t sworn in until five months later, after Gbagbo refused to admit defeat, leading to violence that left at least 3,000 people dead or missing.

Term Limits

Ivory Coast has a limit of two five-year presidential terms. Ouattara previously said a new constitution adopted in 2016 would allow him to run again, a claim that angered his opponents and raised fears that a tense election could derail confidence in an economy that has grown by 7% or more since 2012.

“Ouattara’s announcement brings a bit of stability and ensures the market that the country won’t” have another post-election crisis, said Nathan Hayes, an Africa analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Ouattara also proposed several alterations to the 2016 constitution in Thursday’s address, including changes to the appointment of the vice president and that lawmakers retain their posts in the event parliamentary elections cannot be held on time.

To contact the reporters on this story: Leanne de Bassompierre in Abidjan at ldebassompie@bloomberg.net;Katarina Hoije in Abidjan at khoije@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andre Janse van Vuuren at ajansevanvuu@bloomberg.net, Paul Richardson

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