Laurent Koudou Gbagbo (born May 31, 1945) has been the president of Côte d'Ivoire (better known in English as The Ivory Coast) since 2000.
Gbagbo was born in the village of Mama, near Gagnoa. He became a history professor and an opponent of the regime of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny. He was imprisoned from March 31, 1971 to January 1973. In 1980, he became Director of the Institute of History, Art, and African Archeology at the University of Abidjan. He participated in a 1982 teachers' strike as a member of the National Trade Union of Research and Higher Education, and at this time he formed what would become the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI). Gbagbo went into exile in France in the same year. He returned to Côte d'Ivoire on September 13, 1988 and at the FPI's constitutive congress, held on November 19–20, 1988, he was elected as the party's Secretary General
Following the introduction of multiparty politics in 1990, Gbagbo was the only candidate to stand against Houphouët-Boigny in the October 1990 presidential election, receiving 18.3% of the vote against Houphouët-Boigny. In the November 1990 parliamentary election, Gbagbo won a seat in the National Assembly, along with eight other members of the FPI; Gbagbo was elected to a seat from Ouragahio District in Gagnoa Department and was President of the FPI Parliamentary Group from 1990 to 1995. In 1992 he was sentenced to two years in prison, charged with inciting violence, but was released later in the year. The FPI boycotted the 1995 presidential election. In 1996, Gbagbo was re-elected to his seat in the National Assembly from Ouragahio, following a delay in the holding of the election there, and in the same year he was elected President of the FPI
At the FPI's 3rd Ordinary Congress on July 9–11, 1999, Gbagbo was chosen as the FPI's candidate for the October 2000 presidential election. This election took place after a December 1999 coup ran in which Robert Guéï took power. Guéï claimed victory in the election, held on October 22, 2000, but a popular revolt in favor of Gbagbo (who claimed he had actually won with 59.4% of the vote) broke out in Abidjan. Guéï was forced to flee, and Gbagbo became president on October 26. [More]
Source: wikipedia.org |