On Wednesday October 7, in a statement, at the Party House in Cocody, Prof. Maurice Kakou Guikahué, chief executive secretary of the PDCI-Rda, reassured the opposition and the populations, as to the effective holding of the meeting at the Stade Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
Ladies and gentlemen
members of opposition political party platforms; Ivorians,
Ivorian women, loving peace, I remind you that next Saturday, Saturday October 10, 2020, there will be a big meeting of opposition political parties, at the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium.
The stadium has been granted to us. And we took the bet to fill it without a podium. Speakers will do so from the official forum. The whole playing area must be full of people. And this area, that is to say the part that is used for playing, will be reserved only for young people. Young people whose future is at stake.
Why this meeting? We want to put on a show of force. We talk enough in our homes. We are not happy. The President of the Republic, Alassane Ouattara, after bringing together the Congress of Côte d’Ivoire, which is constitutional, that is to say the deputies elected by the nation, the senators elected by the members of the municipal and regional councils , your performance, March 5. He said he was not a candidate.
On August 6 of the same year, he said he was a candidate. His candidacy is illegal, unconstitutional. So, like in a village, when there are things you don’t do, if someone does, you say no.
So we are organizing this meeting to say no to President Alassane Ouattara, no third term.
He had two mandates as our constitutions provide, that of 2000 and that of 2016. Therefore, President Ouattara must step down for there to be peace in Côte d’Ivoire.
He saw that the populations spontaneously took to the streets. There were 30 deaths. It’s too much, we don’t want it, we want peace.
Second, Presidents Laurent Gbagbo and Soro Guillaume were abnormally removed from the electoral list. The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights calls for their reinstatement.
All those who want Gbagbo and Soro to return to the electoral list and their candidacies to be accepted, that all of them come to the stadium.
The Independent Electoral Commission, there are only RHDP people in there, all the opposition parties are no longer participating. It is no longer an independent electoral commission, so this commission can no longer organize elections because it fell, it died.
So the commission that organizes the elections, if it doesn’t exist, there are no elections.
So come in large numbers to the stadium to demand that we reform the Independent Electoral Commission. All those in Côte d’Ivoire who want Gbagbo to come back quickly, who want Soro to come back, Blé Goudé to come back, Akossi Bendjo to come back, come to the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium.
You have seen, the missions of ECOWAS, the AU, the UN and the Council of the Entente have passed to Côte d’Ivoire. They listened to us. They said there has to be dialogue.
Yes, there has to be dialogue. But, ourselves, we will take our responsibilities to call this dialogue. The opposition parties are calling for a mediator and a facilitator to sit us down, because the Ivory Coast is a country of dialogue.
If we are Houphouetists, we must accept to sit down. In the 10 years that Alassane Ouattara has been President of the Republic, he has never met his opposition. He refuses dialogue, so a mediator is requested to make this dialogue.
But to encourage people, to watch Côte d’Ivoire, you’ve seen the diplomatic ballet, people from the European Union, ECOWAS, AU and UN who come to say that Côte d’Ivoire is an important country, the people must express themselves.
Do we who do not want President Alassane Ouattara’s third term in office, are there many of us in Côte d’Ivoire? Yes!
We took the largest stadium in Abidjan, we requested the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium, so come to the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium. Come from everywhere and from Abidjan.
For the elders, tell your young people what happened when President Houphouët-Boigny summoned people to the Geo André stadium. They came from everywhere. They were on bicycles, in trailers, in buses everywhere. Take all means of transport and come to the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium. It will be good for President Ouattara himself. Maybe we are lying to him, because he is president, he is far from the people, we are lying to him that those who do not agree are not numerous.
Let us come and show him that there are many of us.
See, they said 1.8 million new people were put on the voters list, when we checked it was just 900.
So that means we are giving him information that is not accurate. So for himself, it takes a lot of us to tell the president who our president is, you have to withdraw your candidacy.
This has already happened in Côte d’Ivoire. Civil disobedience is nothing new. In the 60s, Houphouët-Boigny, at the height of his glory, in the single party, wanted dual nationality between Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso (Editor’s note, ex-Haute Volta), the population rose up to say no. Houphouët retreated. So if you want Ouattara to step back, come and fill the Houphouët-Boigny stadium. Get together, all the executives, all the young people, you who are chatting in the houses and who say that we do not see the actions. The first act, let’s fill the Houphouët-Boigny stadium.
Do not be afraid. Safety will be guaranteed. If there are germs, we have the antibiotics.
Thank you.
