[3] The paper regularly ran critical coverage of the government of President Bédié, resulting in several court appearances on defamation charges and prison sentences for at least six members of the editorial staff.
[2] On 18 December 1995, La Voie ran an article on the Ivorian ASEC Mimosas's loss to the South African Orlando Pirates in the finals of football's CAF Champions League.
A sidebar by reporter Emmanuel Koré, headlined "Il maudit l’ASEC" ("He cursed/jinxed ASEC"), jokingly suggested that the bad luck of President Bédié's presence had caused the team's defeat; the article also played on the slogans from Bédié's re-election literature of the previous year, in which he promised to bring "good luck" to the nation.
[1] Koré and La Voie's publication director Abou Drahamane Sangar were arrested shortly after the article's appearance.
[4] During his imprisonment, Neruda continued to write news stories from jail, smuggling them out and publishing them in L'alternative under the apparently female pen name "Bintou Diawara".