Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Abidjan (Agenzia Fides) - "The launch of the Party of African Peoples-Ivory Coast (Ppa-ci) promoted by former president of Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo can be considered both a masterful lesson in politics and the seed sown in fertile ground for its renewal for a better tomorrow". This is what Father Donald Zagore, Ivorian theologian of the Society for African Missions, wrote to Agenzia Fides, speaking about the recent constitution of the Ppa-CI, which includes the appointment of Gbagbo as its first president. "It is perhaps the kind of democracy that African people dream of. A policy made with elegance but with as many challenges - adds Zagore. As if to say that there is still a lot of work to be done, but that politics is not war. This is a political impetus that fully coincides with those who say that in politics it is possible to meet without necessarily agreeing, to discuss without insulting, to oppose without ending up in prison, to celebrate these ideals without touching bloodshed, simply to do politics without violence".
The SMA missionary believes that this is the way of doing politics, the basis of a true democracy. "It is the leaven for a new political beginning not only for Ivory Coast, but also for the whole of Africa.
Without a doubt, another history of Ivorian politics is being written, very different from the one we have known for years". With the creation of the Ppa-ci, Gbagbo gives a twist to the Front Populaire Ivoirien (Fpi), the previous political formation that he founded in 1982, which was divided into two factions by the crisis of 2010-2011 and left 3,000 dead. In the Fpi, on the one hand, there was the group of Pascal Affi n'Guessan, president of the so-called "legal" Fpi due to the recognition by the judicial authorities of his position as president of the party in 2015, and on the other the group Fpi "GoR" (Gbagbo or nothing) of the former president. Arrested in April 2011 and later transferred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity following the violence related to the 2010 presidential elections, Gbagbo was finally acquitted last March and returned to Ivory Coast on June 17, 2021. (DZ/AP) (Agenzia Fides, 20/10/2021)
