Tidjane Thiam suffers major blow to presidential ambitions in Ivory Coast

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Former Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam has been removed from Ivory Coast’s electoral register by a court, according to his lawyer, in a ruling that could end his bid to run for president in a vote in October.

Rodrigue Dadjé, the lawyer representing Thiam, said the court of first instance in Ivory Coast’s commercial capital of Abidjan ruled he should be struck off the electoral roll because he was a French citizen when he first registered.

The west African state requires someone who wants to contest the presidential election to be on the electoral register.

The court ruling, which cannot be appealed, marks a major blow for the 62-year-old leader of the opposition Democratic party and his presidential ambitions.

He was expected to pose the most serious challenge to President Alassane Ouattara’s ruling party, the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace, in the October election.

Thiam was born in Abidjan and previously held dual French and Ivorian citizenship.

He renounced his French citizenship in February in an effort to meet the eligibility criteria for running as a presidential candidate in the Ivorian election.

He on Tuesday described the court ruling as “democratic vandalism” designed to “disenfranchise millions of voters”.

“Ivorians expect the judicial system to guarantee peaceful, transparent and credible elections, not to serve as an instrument for a regime seeking to hoard power and silence its critics,” Thiam said in a statement.

Thiam added that Ouattara’s party “has used the courts to eliminate its most serious rival, while maintaining the illusion of due process”. Ouattara’s spokesperson has been contacted for comment.

Ouattara has been in power since 2010 and won a controversial third presidential term in 2020 after arguing that a constitutional amendment adopted six years into his tenure reset the clock on his time in office.

The president has yet to announce whether he will contest the October election in the world’s largest cocoa producer, but top officials in his party have urged him to stand.

Thiam won the leadership of the centre-right Democratic party in 2023 and was officially named its presidential candidate last week.

Thiam on Tuesday called on the international community to support “Ivorian voters in their quest for free and fair elections”.

He also said Ivory Coast’s party leaders across the political spectrum should unite to enable him to run in the presidential election, citing a precedent that allowed Ouattara to contest the 2010 poll despite being barred twice previously.