Two weeks before Côte d'Ivoire's October 25 presidential election, the first day of the campaign was marked by a crackdown on the opposition by law enforcement. On Saturday, October 11, while a jubilant crowd of supporters of incumbent President Alassane Ouattara, who, at 83, is running for a fourth term, gathered for his first campaign rally in the central city of Daloa, opposition supporters who attempted to hold a rally in Abidjan were forcefully dispersed by law enforcement officers.
Despite a ban on demonstrations issued by the Abidjan prefecture the day before, protesters took to the streets of the city, the country's economic capital, at dawn. They gathered in response to a call from the Common Front, a coalition comprised of the Parti Démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire ("Democratic Party of Ivory Coast," PDCI) and the Parti des Peuples Africains ("African People's Party," PPA-CI), to protest both Ouattara's candidacy and the exclusion of their own candidates from the presidential race. The PDCI's Tidjane Thiam and PPA-CI's Laurent Gbagbo were both declared ineligible: Thiam for legal reasons, Gbagbo due to a prior legal conviction.
They tried to regroup for hours, in vain. Security forces, which had been deployed in large numbers since the day before, arrested protesters and bystanders alike without moderation in the Saint-Jean and Blockhaus neighborhoods of the suburb of Cocody, where the protest march had been due to be held. Any attempt to gather a crowd together was immediately thwarted with volleys of tear gas and charges by police and gendarmes.
"The gas entered the houses, we couldn't breathe," said a resident of the Blockhaus neighborhood. "I have a 4-year-old son; the gas got into his mouth and eyes. He nearly choked. I was terrified." Journalists were assaulted, and some had their equipment confiscated or were forced to delete their footage. According to the interior minister, who spoke about the protestors' "irresponsibility," 237 people were arrested. The authorities reported no casualties. In 2020, similar electoral unrest left 85 people dead and more than 500 injured.
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