As he waits to see if negotiating in the halls of power and street pressure can save his bid to become president of Ivory Coast, Tidjane Thiam is learning the unpleasant lesson.
When a judge decided on April 22 that the 62-year-old had forfeited his Ivorian citizenship by obtaining French nationality decades earlier and failing to revoke it until it was too late to cast a ballot this year, seemingly unrelenting progress toward the October election came to a juddering halt.
After more than 20 years in international finance, Thiam returned to Ivory Coast in 2022 and was instantly viewed as a possible candidate to succeed incumbent President Alassane Ouattara.
