Laurent Gbagbo

Koudou Laurent Gbagbo (born 31 May 1945) is an Ivorian politician who served as the president of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 until his arrest in April 2011. He was the first president in the history of the country that was a centre-left politician. A historian, Gbagbo was imprisoned in the early 1970s and again in the early 1990s, and he lived in exile in France during much of the 1980s as a result of his union activism. Gbagbo founded the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) in 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for president against Félix Houphouët-Boigny at the start of multi-party politics in 1990. He won a seat in the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire in 1990.

Gbagbo claimed victory after Robert Guéï, head of a military junta, barred other leading politicians from running in the October 2000 presidential election. The Ivorian people took to the streets, toppling Guéï. Gbagbo was then installed as president.

In the 2010 presidential election, Alassane Ouattara defeated Gbagbo, and was recognized as the winner by election observers, the international community, the African Union (AU), and the Economic Community of West African States. However, Gbagbo refused to step down, despite mounting international pressure. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced that Ouattara had won the race with 54% of the vote, a tally that the United Nations concluded was credible; however, the Constitutional Council, a body dominated by pro-Gbagbo members, annulled the results in Ouattara's electoral strongholds in the north, claiming fraud, and declared Gbagbo the winner with 51% of the vote. In December 2010, both Gbagbo and Ouattara assumed the presidency, triggering a short period of civil conflict in which about 3,000 people were killed.