The Kot D’Ivoire’s red card policy is its own goal for democracy after the ban on Tigan Tiam

Even a star international business career can not prepare you for the difficult realities of Kot D’IVire’s policy, where some call into question the democratic powers of the West African nation, the most famous for being the producer of most of the world cocoa and some of his best players.

This is a painful tidjane thiam lesson as he waits to see whether the conclusion of deals in the corridors of power and the popular pressure from the street can save his candidacy to become president of Kot D’Ivory.

The seemingly ruthless progress to the election for this October came to a refereeing on April 22, when a judge ruled that the 62-year-old had lost his citizenship to Ivorian, having previously taken decades of French nationality and did not cancel it until it was too late to qualify for this year’s vote.

Returning back to Kot D’IVire in 2022. After more than two decades in global finance, Tiam was immediately regarded as a potential contender for inheriting the current state leader Alasan Owatara, who is now 83 years old in the last year of his third term.

Scion of a traditionally noble family And a great nephew of the revered founder of the country, Felix Huffweet-Botini, he impressed as a senior civil servant and minister in the 1990s, watching the development of infrastructure and radical economic reforms.

The military coup then pushed Tiam to seek a new career abroad, which ended with high -profile claims as CEO of the UK insurance giant, and then the banking group Credit Suisse.

But afterwards, returning home, three years ago, he began steady progress to the next presidential election and Ivorts.

Following his death in 2023, former President Henri Conan Bedi, a long -time leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Kot D’Ivory (PDCI), Tiam was perfectly positioned to take his place, and then on April 17 this year he was elected the party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential race.

This was not a guarantee of victory, and especially if – it seems quite plausible, Ouattara chooses to run for a fourth term, supported by all assets and benefits of activity and experience of four consecutive years of economic growth over 6%.

However, Tiam stood out as a major alternative.

As an opponent of the Houphouëtists’ ruling rally for democracy and peace (RHDP), he offered the voters of Yvoryan Chance to change their government.

Yet with his centrist politics and solid technocratic powers, his application has proposed a soothing competence and the prospect of continuing the impressive economic progress that Ouattara has piloted since 2011.

Now this potential trajectory is blocked. If the judgment stands – and the Ivorian law does not offer any opportunity to appeal to this particular issue – Thiam will be out of the competition in October.

This is a race that has already excluded three other prominent opposition figures – former President Laurent Gbagbo, former Prime Minister Guillaume Guillaume Soro and former Minister, Charles Paj – all central actors and civil conflicts that brutal priority

The prospect now is that Ouattara or any elected candidate for the RHDP heir will approach the election without face any political heavyweight challenge.

This can only deepen the already widespread popular disappointment of Ivorians from the country’s political institution.

This is against the wider context of West Africa, where the radical antipolitics of the rhetoric of soldiers who have seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, are already finding a nice audience among many discouraged young people.

This really matters in societies where the three -quarters of the population is usually under 35 years old.

Against the backdrop of this West African democracy crisis, there were some moments of encouragement.

In Liberia in 2023 and in Senegal and Ghana last yearThe acting governments were voted in free and fair elections, the results of which were accepted by all competitors without dispute.

The Senegalese result, more special, owes much to the huge enthusiastic mobilization of young peopleS

Many hoped that Ivoire Coast can offer a more positive positive example of a democratic choice and the proposal for change and an example, which may be even more influential because the country is a prosperous regional power plant.

This is the economic driver of the single currency block of CFA Franc, and in addition to the cocoa industry, it is also a key center for business services and finance and a leading political voice in the regional group, the economic community of the Western African countries (Ecowas).

What is happening in the d’Ivoire Cott, really matters and is widely spotted, in West Africa, and really also in Africa of Francophone in general.

Ouattara is one of the most famous statesmen on the continent, commanding broad respect internationally.

Nevertheless, now the decisive subsequent presidential election in the country has become a returning version of the identity policy that has so raised the bitter disputes and instability of the 90s and 2000s.

Then the governments of the First Bedie, and then Gbagbo used the controversial “Ivoirité”, which means the Ivorian-Eneness Act to close the Watara of the positioning of the Presidency on the grounds that his family claims to be of foreign origin.

It was not until 2007 that the government did the ban on its candidacy, and it was not until 2016 – when he was already in office – that at first a new constitution ended the requirement that the requested parents of the presidential candidates were local Ivorians.

The poisonous mobilization of identity issues was a major factor in civil wars, street violence, and the northern separatist share that brutally marked an Ivory Coast for more than a decade, until 2011, priced at thousands of lives.

Today, the country feels far from such a large -scale conflict.

There is no popular appetite to return to confrontation and politicians remain far from the ignition rhetoric of the past.

But Tiam’s saga shows how the problems of identity, even in a more illegal form and in this one, hopefully a more relaxed era, can still weigh strongly.

Kot D’Ivoire allows only double nationality under certain limited conditions.

So, in his decision on April 22, Abidjan’s court stated that, under the conditions of a little used law after independence, Tiam automatically lost his citizenship Ivorian almost four decades ago when he acquired French nationality-after several years of training in Paris.

Although officially betrayed that this February and thus automatically recovered its original citizenship, it was too late to join this year’s voter or candidate register.

In vain, his lawyers claim that through his father, Tiam had French nationality from birth – which, if accepted, would release him from the ban on double nationality.

Striving to emphasize the absurdity and inconsistencies of the situation, he claims that the country logically must now return its pronounced title to the Football Title of the Cup of Nations in 2024, as many players also have French nationality.

“If we apply the law along the way (this one), they just apply it to me, we have to return Nigeria’s glass – because half of the team was not Ivorian,” He told the BBCS

And Thursday can bring another failure to the planned court hearing, when a judge can now decide that Tiam cannot, as unaccounted for PDCI.

Over the last two weeks, there has been a continued political and legal debate on all this saga, with Tiam’s camp hoping that a combination of popular pressure and discreet political negotiations will lead to a compromise that puts it back into the presidential race, perhaps with other claimants.

And ouattara, if he decides not to run, may want to defend his impressive experience and secure his international reputation by interfering with some deal that allows Thiam to work.

For months in front of the polls, there is still time for this. But no one rely on it.

Paul Meli is a consulting contributor to the Africa program in Chatham House in London.