Guillaume Soro against Alassane Ouattara over the presidency in Ivory Coast.
Guillaume Soro, excluded from the list for the presidential election of October 31 in Côte d’Ivoire, calls on Emmanuel Macron to take a stand against Alassane Ouattara, the outgoing president who is seeking a third term while the Ivorian constitution limits to two the number of terms.
Former Prime Minister of Ivory Coast Guillaume Soro, in an open letter published by the JDD, calls on Emmanuel Macron before the holding of a tense presidential election in his country. Excluded from the list for the presidential election in October, he had already protested, on August 9, against the candidacy of outgoing president, Alassane Ouattara. “I have the dictatorship against me but the law with me,” he said. Ivory Coast “is caught in a whirlwind that knocks down fundamental freedoms and dismantles the rule of law,” he is alarmed today.
Soro, Ivory Coast’s former Prime Minister addressed an open letter published to President Macron that Ivorians have noticed France’s “deafening silence” on the matter.
“The Constitution, the foundation of our republican structure, is being demolished. No woman, no man of goodwill, no democrat in the world can resign himself from this crime committed before our eyes against one of the most important and stable countries in Africa. You recently visited Ivory Coast but are you really informed of what is happening? Disappointed, Ivorian opinion also found in very bad taste the pathetic waddling of a 75-year-old president on a dance floor, trying to coax you in this circumstance that he thought was favorable, while the social situation of the country is so worrying. We are millions and millions. We strained our ears. We have only heard silence from France.” Soro noted in his letter.
He went ahead by adding the fact that “And what about these power militias who are now attacking peaceful demonstrators with clubs and machetes in front of the police’s complicit eyes, what about these humiliated and abused women, what about the demonstrations now banned, what to say about all of them? these abuses widely denounced by Amnesty International and by so many other NGOs?”
Recall that, Soro was sentenced to 20 years in jail on charges of embezzlement and money laundering. An Ivory Coast court handed down the sentence to Soro which included a fine of seven million euros. Soro was tried in absentia as he currently lives in Paris. Soro has steadfastly denied all of the charges against him, saying they are “trumped up” designed to keep him from participating in the country’s scheduled presidential elections. Soro has been living in political exile in France after the Republic of Ivory Coast issued an arrest warrant last December for involvement in an alleged coup plot.
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