The Ivorian Popular Front (French: Front populaire ivoirien), known by its French initials FPI, is a centre-left, democratic socialist and social democratic, political party in Côte d'Ivoire.
FPI was founded in exile in 1982 by history professor Laurent Gbagbo during the one-party rule of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Politically inspired by the French Socialist Party, the FPI was until 2011 a full member of the Socialist International (SI). The expulsion of the FPI from the SI occurred as a result of the 2010–2011 Ivorian crisis.
Gbagbo was sworn in as president after the heavily disputed presidential election of October 22, 2000. In the parliamentary election held on 10 December 2000 and 14 January 2001, the party won 96 out of 225 seats.
The party president is Pascal Affi N'Guessan, a former prime minister. Following Gbagbo's election as president, he was required to step down as party leader, and N'Guessan was elected to head the party at its 3rd Extraordinary Congress in July 2001.
The Ivorian Popular Front boycotted the 2011 parliamentary election, accusing the electoral commission of bias in favour of Alassane Ouattara and accusing the army of intimidating FPI supporters during the campaign. The party also complained of having been limited in informing the electorate, with the pro-FPI newspaper Notre Voie having been banned by the government and many of its journalists arrested or jailed.
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or front:
“The very nursery tales of this generation were the nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from west to east; now expanded into the “tale divine” of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o’-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)