Pascal Affi N’Guessan, Ivorian opposition leader and former Prime Minister has been arrested for announcing a parallel government after President Alassane Ouattara’s controversial third term election victory.
According to family and his political party sources, N’Guessan was arrested late Friday by security agents while on his way to his hometown Bongouanou, near the Ivorian border with Ghana.
He and two other opposition leaders have rejected the results of the October 31 election, which they all boycotted.
Ouattara was declared the winner of the poll with 94.27% of the vote. His government has come hard on the opposition leaders accusing them of terrorism, murder and treason for planning to set up a rival Transition Government.
More than 40 people have been killed in protests against Ouattara’s 3rd term bid from August.
But Ouattara, 78, insists the two terms he has served were under the 2010 constitution, while the new mandate is under the amended 2016 constitution.
A similar argument by former president Laurent Gbagbo, one of the 40 candidates barred from this latest election plunged Cote d’Ivoire into crisis after a disputed 2010 presidential poll and a subsequent civil war that killed more than 3,000 people in that country.