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Former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, who returned home last month a decade after his fall from power, will meet ex-President Henri Konan Bedie this weekend, Bedie’s office said on Monday in the final stage of the country’s long political crisis.
“This visit will be the occasion for a fraternal reunion between the two presidents after the return of President Laurent Gbagbo to his homeland as a free man,” he said in a statement.
The meeting between the two men, former rivals who have become allies, will take place on Saturday in Daoukro, a stronghold of Bédié in central Côte d’Ivoire.
Gbagbo, 76, Bédié, 87, and Alassane Ouattara, 79, the current president, have dominated the Ivorian political scene for decades, often plunging into rivalries or forging alliances.
During Gbagbo’s decade in power, the country was rocked by revolt and turmoil, culminating in a conflict that erupted after he refused to cede electoral defeat to Ouattara.
Gbagbo was arrested in April 2011 and taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face charges of crimes against humanity resulting from the violence, which claimed the lives of some 3,000 people.
He was acquitted in January 2019, a decision that was confirmed in March this year and allowed him to return home on June 17.
Ouattara, his former rival, officially welcomed his return, seeing it as an opportunity to ease the country’s stubborn problems.
Ivory Coast. By Tupac POINTU (AFP) Last year, dozens of people were killed in pre-election clashes with police after Ouattara controversially exposed his candidacy for a third presidential term.
The October 31 elections ended in a landslide victory for him, but were vitiated by all credibility after most of the opposition boycotted the ballot.
Bédié teamed up with Ouattara in the 2010 elections, but in 2018 his Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) joined the opposition.
In March, he forged an electoral alliance with Gbagbo’s Front populaire ivoirien (PFI) party.
The former Prime Minister of Gbagbo, Pascal Affi N’Guessan, called on Ouattara, Bédié and Gbagbo to meet so that Côte d’Ivoire “definitively emerges from the crisis and seals reconciliation”.
Gbagbo is currently in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he has been on a private visit since Friday to see former Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, with whom he befriended when the couple were both in custody at the ICC.
His return to Côte d’Ivoire is scheduled for Thursday.
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