Laurent Gbagbo

Supporters of his predecessor as President Laurent Gbagbo on the other hand saw it as a clever ploy to take the top job in the governing Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix (RHDP) which is principally an alliance between the RDR and its junior partner the former ruling party the Parti démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI)...

Pro-Laurent Gbagbo sources were adamant that it was to keep their hero in The Hague: Ouattara could have been discussing the series of recent armed attacks against police stations in which two of Gbagbo's closest collaborators Stéphane Kipré and Damana Pickass have been accused of involvement and would argue that Gbagbo was behind them...

There is less counterbalance from the centre of the country the traditional power hub; the west former President Laurent Gbagbo's stronghold; and the economic capital Abidjan...

Others deserted from ex-President Laurent Gbagbo's Forces de défense et de sécurité and joined the Forces nouvelles rebels of Guillaume Soro now Speaker of Parliament who controlled the north and then carved it up among some ten military warlords the 'com-zones'...

Warlords who were crucial to ADO's victory over his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo still hold important state positions...

Other clouds include his treatment of Ex-President Laurent Gbagbo's son Michel Gbagbo and another looming legal problem connected to the executions in 2002 of 60 gendarmes in Bouaké which was under his control at the time...

Media supporters of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo tried to show that the presence of dozos proved security was illusory and claimed the country now offered free entry to jihadists...

Meanwhile the previously ruling Front populaire ivoirien (FPI) will either have to reinvent itself or find ways to mend fences between its two factions one behind ex-President Laurent Gbagbo another following the official leader Pascal Affi N'Guessan...

Soro's people insist the tapes are fake but those who leaked them journalists close to ex-President Laurent Gbagbo insist they aren't...

Soro may have glimpsed an omen of things to come while he was in Paris for COP21 when French magistrate Sabine Khéris on 5 December issued an arrest warrant for him for an alleged kidnapping of Laurent Gbagbo's son Michel Gbagbo...

That's when one of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo's youth leaders Damana Adia Pickass tore up the election results on live television (AC Vol 53 No 21 Gbagbo's Ghana connection)...

The opposition – the pro-Laurent Gbagbo section of the Front populaire ivoirien being the most vociferous – greatly enjoyed making political capital out of accusing Ouattara of collusion with the putschists in Ouagadougou...

That has started to change this year with dissidents emerging from within Ouattara's own camp while his long-standing foes the followers of former President Laurent Gbagbo are regrouping...