Presidential elections were held in Ivory Coast on 22 October 1995. They were boycotted by the main opposition parties, the Ivorian Popular Front and the Rally of the Republicans, in protest of new electoral rules that the opposition deemed unfair. Presidential candidates were required to have been born of two Ivorian parents, and to have been resident in the country for the previous five years. These provisions appeared to have been aimed at the RDR's intended candidate, former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara. He had been in the United States since 1990 while working for the International Monetary Fund, and there had been longstanding rumors that his father had been born in Burkina Faso.