Gbagbo’s Daughter Fights On

Honore Koua

16 June 2011

Nairobi — While armed conflict ended in Côte d’Ivoire after the ouster of Laurent Gbagbo in April, his supporters continue the fight through other means.Their new battleground is the law and media, despite being handicapped by the imprisonment of several of their comrades accused of crimes of violence.

Others are in exile for fear of being arrested or killed. Many of them have their bank accounts blocked in Côte d’Ivoire.

Marie-Antoinette Singleton is arguably the leader of this last group of active faithful. She is the daughter of Simone Gbagbo, wife of the former president. Appointed vice-consul of the Cote d’Ivoire embassy in Washington, D.C., Marie Antoinette is a child of a previous marriage between her mother and an Ivorian, Joseph Ehouman. She is married to an American.

Côte d’Ivoire and the world woke up to the existence of this daughter-in-law of Gbagbo in early April a few days before his arrest. She was doing the rounds of US television shows denouncing vehemently the intervention of France and the United Nations in the Ivorian conflict. She has since stepped up the campaign for the release of her parents – who are under house arrest – through petitions, phone calls and letters to French, Ivorian and UN authorities.

Marie-Antoinette Singleton also hired a leading team from the French Bar, which includes famous lawyers like Jacques Verges, Roland Dumas, and Gilbert Collard – to defend her “illegally detained” family members and their collaborators.She works closely with a former adviser to Gbagbo, Toussaint Alain, who is based in France. Alain, a former journalist who is well known in Ivorian and French media, began the campaign on behalf of Gbagbo even earlier.

Once the post-election power struggle between Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara started in earnest last December, Alain became a fixture on French media and the public lecture circuit resides his European visits travelled across Europe seeking to sanitise Gbagbo’s image.

He has toured Canada and the US to mobilise Gbagbo backers in those countries where many support groups have been formed. Alain is also very active on the Internet; he is among Ivorian public notables most followed on Facebook.

He has also been busy distributing press releases of “Gbagbo family interviews” and other documents related to the campaign for the release of Gbagbo.

Besides the alliance of Marie-Antoinette Singleton and Alain Toussaint, another rallying point for the pro-Gbagbo supporters is the Frenchman Bernard Houdin.

A special advisor to Gbagbo during the last three years of his rule, Houdin is an old figure of the French extreme political right. Unlike the French socialists who have distanced themselves from the deposed president one after another, Houdin has remained steadfastly on his side.

He has been very committed, even overruling certain decisions by his friend’s stepdaughter. After Marie-Antoinette removed Verges and Dumas from Gbagbo’s legal team, Houdin had them reinstated. He then told a meeting of Gbagbo supporters that he made the decision on the instructions of the former president.

It was also through Bernard Houdin that the former president released a press statement dated May 30 in which he denounced alleged atrocities committed against his supporters “for crimes of opinion. Gbagbo also supported his party’s refusal to join Ouattara’s government.

As all this is happening, one of Gbagbo’s most visible supporters and leader of the defunct ‘Young Patriots’ militia, Charles Blé Goudé, resurfaced after two months of silence. (Some reports had earlier indicated he had been killed during the violent power transition in April).

In a lengthy phone interview published by the France-based Pan-African weekly Jeune Afrique, the man nicknamed “street General” added his voice to those calling for Gbagbo’s release, adding: “I will be the last person to abandon him.”He also vowed, from wherever he is in hiding, to participate in Ivorian political debate and to play his part in the process of national reconciliation.

Ostracised by the UN since 2006 and accused by members of the Ouattara camp of having distributed weapons to young people during post-election conflict, Blé Goudé nonetheless remains the most popular leader of Gbagbo’s political heirs.

His supporters say he is not calling for violence but preparing to adorn his mentor’s political mantle. That would mean he will in future seek to find a way of running for president when the time comes.

Inside Cote d’Ivoire, Gbagbo’s supporters are more discreet – with the exception of his party’s newspaper, the daily Notre Voie.

Following the looting of its headquarters and the destruction of its equipment during the violence, the newspaper is back on newsstands after two months of absence.

According to the director of Notre Voie, Cesar Etou, the majority of his journalists are in hiding following threats. Their headquarters is still occupied by pro-Ouattara forces and they complain they have to work from a secret place.

This newspaper is the only pro-Gbagbo daily in circulation now, facing a dozen or so other newspapers that back the new regime.

The leaders of the Ivorian Popular Front, Gbagbo’s former ruling party, are also not very active.

According to its interim leader and chairman of the National Assembly, Mamadou Koulibaly, the priority is to reorganise the party in preparation for the parliamentary elections scheduled for late 2011.

Responding to grouses from Gbagbo supporters that he has not been vocal about the former leader’s release, Koulibaly was quoted as saying: “He himself had said that if he fell one day, we should step over him to continue the fight. Stepping over him does not mean forgetting and our militants should know that.”

Koulibaly, an economist, is one of the few leading political figures in the deposed regime. He is neither in jail nor in exile and has not overtly pledged allegiance to the new president. Observers believe that Koulibaly, whose relationship with Gbagbo had deteriorated toward the end, is readying himself to contest the 2015 presidential election.

On the military front, almost all the generals and officers previously loyal to the former regime are now allied to Ouattara. Some of them were arrested or killed, and other fled to exile.

General Boniface Konan, a respected 0fficer in the military, is among the few high-ranking officers who fled the country. From his exile in Ghana, he has refuted rumours that he was planning a coup.

AllAfrica – All the Time