(Relevant) People Who Went To Penn: Alassane Ouattara
April 20, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Yesterday, we were really excited to introduce you to Penn alum and Estonian president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves. But after a little more snooping around, we found an even cooler president that Penn popped out!
Meet Alassane Ouattara, the president of Côte d'Ivoire (which also doubles as Ivory Coast on Sporcle quizzes). The catch is that his ascension to presidency has been super controversial and a hot topic in current events—imagine a misplaced birth certificate times 100. We hate getting political, but for those of you who glean the news from episodes of The Colbert Report, we're gonna break this one down for you after the jump.
Ouattara was born in Côte d'Ivoire in 1942 and received his B.S. down the street at Drexel before completing a master's in economics here at Penn.
When rumors stirred in 1994 that he was considering running for president the following year, the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire approved a new code that prevented candidates from running if either of their parents were of a foreign nationality and if they had not lived in Côte d'Ivoire for the preceding five years. Ouattara was out of luck and stepped down from the election.
Fast forward through a few years and a major civil war, and stop at the 2010 election in Côte d'Ivoire. By this time, Ouattara had gained approval to run for presidency, and he found himself in a race against the nation's incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo. In an episode that would make for an Oscar-worthy movie, the results of the election were snatched away—the Independent Electoral Commission declared Ouattara winner, and the Constitutional Council then invalidated 500,000 votes from pro-Ouattara regions, declaring Gbagbo the winner.
Among others, the African Union, European Union and the UN rejected Gbagbo's presidency. After many negotiation attempts, Ouattara ordered a military offensive that arrested Gbagbo and installed Ouattara in office on April 11, 2011. Which, according to our count, was just 9 days ago!
Final count: People who went to Penn: 1. People who didn't go to Penn: 0. Wikipedia: 1,000.