I.Coast President Ouattara, 83, says will seek fourth term

ABIDJAN - Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said Tuesday he will seek a fourth term in the west African country, as tensions rise over the exclusion of many heavyweight opposition candidates.

Ouattara, 83, has led Ivory Coast since 2011.

He had been earlier officially nominated by his ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party as its candidate, but had not yet said if he would contest the October 25 election.

"I am a candidate because the constitution of our country allows me to run for another term and my health permits it," he said, adding that the world's top cocoa producer was "facing unprecedented security, economic, and monetary challenges, the management of which requires experience".

Critics of Ouattara accuse him of tightening his grip on power and strongly oppose him running again.

The opposition has accused the authorities of choosing their opponents by legal means, but the government insists the judiciary acts independently.

The two main opposition parties have launched a joint campaign to demand the reinstatement of their barred leaders ahead of the presidential election.

This alliance brings together the African People's Party of Ivory Coast (PPACI) - led by former president Laurent Gbagbo - and the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), the country's largest opposition force, headed by former international banker Tidjane Thiam.

Gbagbo, his former right-hand man Charles Ble Goude and ex-prime minister Guillaume Soro have been struck from the electoral register due to criminal convictions.

Thiam was also excluded by the judiciary over nationality issues.

Ouattara worked at the International Monetary Fund and the west African regional bank BCEAO and entered politics when Ivory Coast's founding president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, appointed him to chair a body on economic recovery in the midst of an economic crisis.

As Houphouet-Boigny's health worsened, Ouattara assumed more and more responsibility for overseeing the country's affairs.

POWER STRUGGLE

When the ailing president died in December 1993, Ouattara was embroiled in a brief power struggle with Henri Konan Bedie, the speaker of parliament, and then left Ivory Coast to join the IMF.

In 1995, he joined the new Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party and planned on running as their presidential candidate.

But he was barred from doing so following new laws requiring both parents of a candidate to be of Ivorian birth for the candidate to have lived continuously in Ivory Coast prior to an election.

He was barred from polls in 2000 on the same grounds. A failed coup two years later led to a low-level civil war, leaving the country divided into the rebel-held and predominantly Muslim north, where Ouattara drew much of his support, and the government-controlled Christian-majority south.

Ouattara who was subjected to violence during the unrest, left the country but returned to contest an election in 2010.

Then-president Gbagbo's refusal to concede electoral defeat to Ouattara led to another period of unrest, in which more than 3,000 people were killed, before Ouattara became president in 2011.

Gbagbo was acquitted on charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague but still has a conviction in Ivory Coast stemming from the violent post-election crisis that ended his rule.

Critics have already questioned the legality of Ouattara's third term as the constitution limites presidential terms to two.

The opposition boycotted the 2020 vote and Ouattara won by a landslide.