Ivory Coast’s Ruling RDHP party has nominated President Alassane Ouattara, 76, to run as its candidate in the October 31st crucial presidential poll.
Official sources said the party took the decision at its just-ended national Convention and Ouattara has until August 6 to make up his mind.
Ouattara is serving out his second five-year mandate and had promised to hand over to a younger generation until the sudden death this month of Prime Minister Gon Coulibaly, the RDHP’s anointed presidential flag bearer.
Should he decide to run, Ouattara would argue that his two mandates were under the old Constitution. The 2016 amended Constitution permits a presidential two-term tenure.
But the opposition has already rejected that line of argument, saying it would amount to a controversial third term mandate for the president Ouattara.
Hard times in the #ECOWAS region with political tension and uncertainty in Cote d’Ivoire, leadership crisis in Mali, amidst a deadly global health pandemic!
