Laurent Gbagbo is filing for divorce. According to a press release signed by one of his lawyers, the former Ivorian president arrested a judge in a marriage case on Monday, June 21, 2021. The consequence, according to him, “of the repeated refusal for several years by Dame Simone Ehivet to agree to a friendly separation”. Laurent and Simone Gbagbo married in 1989. She co-founded the Front populaire ivoirien (FPI).
as reported from Abidjan, Pierre Pinto
Laurent Gbagbo is officially requesting a divorce. In a brief statement, one of his lawyers announces that the former president has seized a judge after his wife Simone Ehivet Gbagbo refused to make a friendly separation.
Claude Menneton, one of Laurent Gbagbo’s lawyers, states in this press release with two sentences to arrest a judge in a divorce case regarding a request for divorce. In question, according to the text, “Dame Simone reiterated Ehivet’s refusal to consent to a friendly separation, in addition through a solution appropriate to their personal statutes and mutual policies”.
This press release confirms what has been rumored for several months and that photos taken of mobile phones leaving Laurent Gbagbo’s plane on Thursday 17 June revealed in bright daylight. We see the former president dismiss his wife with an uninviting gesture.
Laurent Gbagbo married Simone Ehivet in 1989. Seven years earlier, this early activist was part, under cover, of the founders of the Ivorian Popular Front. From 2000, when Laurent Gbagbo joined the highest office, Simone Gbagbo was a very political first lady, a woman of power and influence, which gave her the nickname “iron lady”.
It was also at this time that Laurent Gbagbo married, according to customary rituals, Nady Bamba. It was on the latter arm that Laurent Gbagbo returned to the Ivory Coast last Thursday.
A divorce with political consequences
On Sunday, Saint-Paul’s Cathedral in Abidjan welcomed a prominent believer. Laurent Gbagbo symbolically made his comeback in the Catholic community, thus breaking with the evangelism he embraced with his wife Simone in the 1990s.
While the latter never deviated from his evangelical discourse, this gesture by Laurent Gbagbo had a clear political significance. He thus differed from Simone and the evangelical clan. It could have waited a few weeks, but he chose to perform this act on his third day in Ivory Coast, analyzes political scientist Sylvain N’Guessan.
Referral to a judge on Monday leaves no room for doubt. The divorce between Laurent and Simone Gbagbo, second vice president of FPI-GOR, is also being consumed at the political level. Differences revealed for the first time at the end of 2018, with party number 2, Aboudramane Sangaré, dead. Laurent Gbagbo, still in prison, refused to allow his wife to take the lead in FPI-GOR.
On the facade, the mocking wife did not hold him back, but regularly demanded that he return, but followed his own agenda. “Today she lets him make mistakes and gathers a lot of sympathy,” says Sylvain N’Guessan. What will be the consequences of this crime on the party’s future? Simone Gbagbo, a founder of FPI, with historical legitimacy, is still very popular with supporters and activists and does not seem to intend to hang up.
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