ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Years after she was holed up in a bunker alongside her then-husband and president who had refused to step down following an election loss, Simone Ehivet Gbagbo is seeking to return to the presidential palace in Ivory Coast 's election this week in what analysts say is an unlikely comeback.
Gbagbo, 76, is running for president in Saturday’s election under the banner of the Movement of Skilled Generations party, competing
against four other candidates including President Alassane Ouattara, who is seeking a fourth term.
In a country where there has never been a female president, Gbagbo tells The Associated Press she could be a first.
“I think this idea (of a female president) is much less shocking than it was 20 years ago,” she said after a presidential campaign outing in Guibéroua in southern Ivory Coast, adding that she believes the country is ready for its first female president. “It’s good for a woman to run, and not just because it’s me. But if it’s me, then so much the better.”
As first lady, Gbagbo was both a powerful and controversial politician, and played an active role in her then-husband’s rule. Nicknamed the “iron lady” due to her influence in power and often tough stance against the opposition and rebels, Gbagbo was Ivory Coast’s first lady during years of conflict under her then-husband Laurent, whose rule witnessed both a civil war and an electoral crisis.
After leading Ivory Coast from 2000 to 2010, including during a civil war between 2002 and 2007, the former president had refused to concede defeat to then-candidate Ouattara in the 2010 election, resulting in a fighting that brought the country to the brink of another civil war with at least 3,000 people dead.
The Gbagbos were eventually arrested in 2011 after French troops and U.N. peacekeepers backed by pro-Ouattara forces stormed a bunker where they had been holed up at the presidential mansion in Abidjan.
Laurent Gbagbo was charged by the International Criminal Court with involvement in the deadly violence of 2010-2011 but was eventually acquitted. The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Simone Gbagbo for “crimes against humanity” but lifted it in 2021 following her husband’s acquittal. In 2015, Ivorian authorities prosecuted and sentenced her to 20 years in prison on charges including “undermining state security." In 2018, she received an amnesty from Ouattara and returned to the political scene shortly after.
The Gbagbos divorced in 2023, ending decades of not just marriage but an unusual political alliance in which both started off as young revolutionary leaders and grew into a powerful pair.
Unlike her ex-husband, who was not cleared to contest in the presidential election, Simone was among the final list of five presidential candidates in what analysts say features a weak opposition challenge including her party. The electoral authorities earlier disqualified most of Ouattara’s prominent rivals, including the former president and former Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam.
Simone Gbagbo is hoping to ride into power relying on her past, having played a key role in Ivorian political history for half a century. As a teacher and trade unionist, she led major revolts for multiparty politics from the 1970s. She was Laurent Gbagbo’s comrade-in-arms before becoming his wife, and, like him, was imprisoned and tortured for her revolutionary campaigns.
As first lady, she embodied the hard line of the presidency and was a staunch opponent of Jacques Chirac’s France, the former colonial power. She has been accused of being involved in the darker aspects of her husband’s rule, particularly the extrajudicial abuses committed by “death squads” during the 2010-2011 political crisis, which she denies.
She has promised social welfare programs to combat poverty, as the country has high inequality levels. She also promises reconciliation, with the wounds from the civil war still fresh.
Simone Gbagbo expressed concerns over tensions amid an alleged clampdown on the opposition.
Ivorians are “angry and frustrated, and rightly so,” she told the AP. "I think the wise thing to do would be to turn out en masse to vote and defeat the candidate they don’t want.”
