\n Ivory Coast's former prime minister Charles Konan Banny on Friday pulled out of the country's presidential election, denouncing an \"iniquitous\" poll that is expected to return incumbent Alassane Ouattara on Sunday.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"After having fought to the end to get our leaders to spare Ivory Coast renewed suffering and frustration I have decided to no longer participate, from this moment, in the iniquitous process imposed on you,\" he told voters in a press conference at his campaign headquarters.\n<\/p>\n
\n Konan Banny, of the opposition National Coalition for Change, is the third candidate to withdraw from the race, following in the footsteps of former foreign minister Amara Essy and former national assembly president Mamadou Koulibaly.\n<\/p>\n
\n Seven candidates remain on the ballot.\n<\/p>\n
\n Konan Banny cited \"grave irregularities\" in the organisation of the election for his decision.\n<\/p>\n
\n Essy had said he did not wish to \"be complicit in an electoral masquerade\" while Koulibaly condemned the poll as already \"rigged\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The government shrugged off their boycott as a bid to duck out of a competition they were tipped to lose.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ouattara has campaigned on turning around the economy of the world's biggest cocoa exporter, after a conflict that split the west African nation for nearly a decade, into a rebel-held north and a loyalist south.\n<\/p>\n
\n The former deputy head of the IMF won office in 2010 in an election that sparked weeks of violence after then president Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat.\n<\/p>\n
\n Gbagbo was eventually ousted by French-backed pro-Ouattara forces and is now in a Dutch jail, awaiting his November war crimes trial by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ouattara's main challenger is another former prime minister, Pascal Affi N'Guessan, who is running on behalf of Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ivory Coast's former prime minister Charles Konan Banny on Friday pulled out of the country's presidential election, denouncing an \"iniquitous\" poll that is expected to return incumbent Alassane Ouattara on Sunday. \"After having fought to the end to get our leaders to spare Ivory Coast renewed suffering and frustration I have decided to no longer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-2658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n