Former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, leader of the opposition African People’s Party – Ivory coast (PPA-CI), has rejected growing calls to adopt a so-called “precautionary plan” to replace his candidacy in the upcoming 2025 presidential election.
Speaking during a meeting with party youth in his hometown of Mama, in western Ivory Coast, Gbagbo acknowledged receiving indirect appeals from abroad urging him to endorse an alternative candidate due to his ineligibility.
“There are people who are looking for Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, but why not a Plan Z? But that’s human beings, human beings are like that. And there are some who call my friends who are in other countries so that they can call me to say that they want to be part of a plan,” Gbagbo remarked.
The 78-year-old former president, removed from the electoral roll, insisted on his centrality to the party’s strategy: “I’m saying there’s a plan here, it’s Gbagbo’s. If he wants to be part of a plan, he comes with Gbagbo and that’s it.”
His comments came shortly after PPA-CI executive Ahoua Don Mello published an open letter urging the party to avoid a political vacuum by allowing “two or three other comrades to submit their candidacy files,” suggesting that an extraordinary party convention could choose a candidate to challenge for the presidency if Gbagbo’s candidacy is barred by the Constitutional Council.
“These applications are not substitutes for yours, but precautionary applications. They will become null and void if your application is accepted by a political solution,” Don Mello wrote, warning that the party risked “emptying itself of its non-ideological and non-resilient substance” after the election if it boycotted the vote.
However, the PPA-CI leadership dismissed the suggestion outright. “There is no Plan B, no precautionary plan. This crudely orchestrated diversion is only intended to mask the fact that the RHDP still does not have an officially declared candidate, three months before the election,” said Sébastien Dano Djédjé, the party’s executive president, in a statement.
Despite lacking party sponsorship, Don Mello has already declared his own candidacy for the 25 October 2025 presidential election, signaling widening divisions within Gbagbo’s party as the electoral deadline approaches.
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