The president of Côte d’Ivoire’s Democratic Party (PDCI), Tidjane Thiam, has called for urgent international pressure on President Alassane Ouattara after his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election was rejected by the Constitutional Council.
Thiam, a former CEO of Crédit Suisse, reacted strongly to the findings of a pre-election assessment mission carried out by the International Republican Institute (IRI), published on 26 September.
The American NGO conducted its mission in Abidjan from 21 to 26 September, just weeks before Ivorians head to the polls on 25 October 2025.
Praising “the courage and integrity of the IRI,” Thiam said its conclusions confirmed “the fatal weaknesses of our electoral system and explicitly highlight the tensions created by this situation.”
The IRI report pointed to the absence of an updated electoral list, the detention of opposition members, and the exclusion of major candidates. Thiam argued these issues validated long-standing opposition claims about the credibility of the electoral roll, which currently lists 8.7 million voters but is “not sufficiently representative and contains too many errors to be a credible basis for a democratic election.”
For Thiam, these shortcomings reflect “deliberate manipulation, orchestrated by the regime to perpetuate its hold on the country while it knows it is a minority.” He insisted that “the election cannot be credible in the current circumstances, without major changes or concessions from the regime.”
He accused the authorities of violating the Electoral Code, which requires an annual revision of the voters’ register. “Did the regime not know that there would be an election in 2025 and now invoke technical excuses for not holding an RLE this year?” he asked.
Fresh from a visit to the United States, Thiam stressed that “America, Europe, and African leaders firmly support Ivorians in our demand for free, fair, and inclusive elections.” He urged the White House, the European Union, the United Nations, the African Union, and ECOWAS to “exert immediate and firm pressure on the Ouattara regime.”
Thiam also denounced financial restrictions, alleging that subsidies legally owed to opposition parties, including the PDCI and the PPA-CI, had not been paid in 2025 as part of efforts to “financially strangle the opposition in an election year.”
Concluding, he warned that Ivorians would not tolerate “a new verdict imposed in advance by a regime that disregards the popular will.”
Out of 60 presidential hopefuls, the Constitutional Council validated only five candidacies, including that of incumbent President Ouattara. Both Tidjane Thiam and former president Laurent Gbagbo were excluded.
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