Wednesday
April 13, 2011
April 13, 2011
Africa
Photos | AFP Former Cote d’Ivoire president Laurent Gbagbo sits beside his wife Simone and son Michel (in cap) after his capture in Abidjan on Monday.
Posted Tuesday, April 12 2011 at 22:22
In Summary
- Former First Lady regarded as power behind the president and feared for death squads targeting husband’s rivals.
Cote d’Voire strongman Laurent Gbagbo, arrested after hiding out for days in a bunker, dragged his country into disaster by refusing for months to accept he lost November presidential elections.
The 65-year-old’s dogged ability to hang on to power is nothing new, having ruled the world’s top cocoa producer since 2000, including for five years after his mandate ended in 2005.
A skilled orator who likes to play the man of the people, shedding suits and ties for African shirts, he conceals a ferocious will behind an affable exterior.
He steadfastly refused to bow to demands to quit after the UN-backed electoral commission said he lost the November 28 poll with only 46 per cent of votes compared to 54 per cent for rival Alassane Ouattara.
“I am president of Cote d’Ivoire,” Gbagbo insisted, leaning on a ruling of a constitutional council headed by one of his allies that he took 51.45 per cent of the votes.
Houphouet-Boigny
Gbagbo cut his teeth in the union during his years of opposition to the “father of the nation,” president Felix Houphouet-Boigny (1960-1993).
Born on May 31, 1945, educated in a Christian seminary the historian soon came to annoy the authorities with his union activities.
His wife, the one-time “Iron Lady” of Cote d’Ivoire, Simone Gbagbo stood firmly by her husband Laurent through highs and lows, including his ignominious arrest from a bunker.
She was dragged out with Laurent Gbagbo in Monday’s dramatic end to a nearly five-month fight for the presidency and taken with him to the hotel headquarters of rival Ouattara, whom she called “head bandit”.
Simone Gbagbo, 61, became First Lady of the world’s top cocoa-producing country in October 2000 when the man she married just over a decade earlier won presidential elections.
Known popularly as “Simone” or “Mother”, she was often regarded as the power behind the president, respected for her own political activism but also feared for alleged involvement in death squads targeting her husband’s rivals.
An evangelical Christian after “miraculously” surviving a car accident in 1998, she convened daily prayers at the presidential residence.
In the 2002 attempted coup, Simone fought for her husband. She rejected the 2003 peace accord that paved the way for a unity government including former rebels, even though it was accepted by her husband.
In the 2010 campaign she was the first to condemn Ouattara, “the scourge”.
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