Côte d’Ivoire’s Ouattara dissolves government amid coalition infighting

Côte d’Ivoire’s Ouattara dissolves government amid coalition infighting

President Alassane Ouattara’s RDR party and former President Henri Konan Bédié’s PDCI party have not seen eye to eye on a great many issues.

The Ivorian government has been dissolved. (Reuters pic)
ABIDJAN:
Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara dissolved the government on Wednesday, according to a statement from the presidency, amid tensions with his party’s partner in the governing coalition.

Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly was re-appointed to form a new government. The rest of the government, including the key posts of finance and defense minister, remains vacant.

Ivorian politics is historically volatile, marked by conflicts over land and race. The country was divided for nearly a decade between a government-controlled south and rebel-held north. A dispute over Ouattara’s first election victory in 2010 led to a civil war that killed some 3,000 people.

Political tensions are rising again before a 2020 election. Constitutional term limits appear to prevent Ouattara from standing for a third term, but he said last month that he is free to run again under a new constitution approved in 2016.

Ouattara won a run-off in 2010 and re-election in 2015, thanks partly to the backing of former President Henri Konan Bédié’s PDCI party, whose members serve in the government.

But the two sides have fallen out over the PDCI’s insistence that Ouattara back a candidate of its choosing in 2020. The PDCI last month rejected the idea of a joint ticket, after Ouattara’s RDR party refused to allow the PDCI to choose the candidate.

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