Ivory Coast: Government Rejects Africa Court’s Order Allowing PM Soro To Run In Election

Ivory Coast government on Wednesday said it will not recognize the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights Tuesday ruling that allowed former Prime Minister, Guillaume Soro, to contest in the upcoming presidential election, reported The BBC.

Government spokesperson Sidi Tiemoko Toure said the government only recognizes a decision by the country’s constitutional court’s decision that barred Soro from the elections as he was sentenced in April to 20 years in prison for concealment of embezzlement of public funds. The court also ordered that Soro be stripped of his Civic rights for seven years. He, however, denied the charges claiming it was a move to stop him contesting in the election.

The constitutional court also barred former President, Laurent Gbagbo, from the elections ad he has been sentenced in absentia to a 20-year term over the looting of the local branch of the Central Bank of West African States during the 2010-11 crisis. The court’s decision sparked violent protests in a number of cities.

Ivory Coast withdrew from the Africa court’s charter in April.

People should “avoid thinking that the way institutions function must come from outside,” Mr. Toure said.

There have been protests over President Alassane Ouattara’s decision to seek a third term after his chosen preferred successor prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, died of a heart attack in July. Around 15 people have died in violence in Ivory Coast since the 78-years-old announced his candidacy last month.

Ivory Coast is scheduled to hold presidential elections on October 31.

Notably, only four of the 44 candidates who had applied their candidacies for the presidential election have been approved. The other candidates who have been allowed to run are former president Henri Konan Bédié from the historically dominant PDCI party, Gbagbo’s former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan, and Kouadio Konan Bertin, a dissident from Bédié’s party.