I Coast political crisis over
2010-03-04 17:09
Abidjan - Ivory Coast's opposition parties on Thursday entered a new government, putting an end to a political crisis triggered when President Laurent Gbagbo last month dissolved the previous cabinet.
The 11 posts reserved for opposition parties in a 28-member team led by Prime Minister Guillaume Soro were handed out in the morning, under a decree read by Gbagbo's secretary-general in the presidency, Amedee Couassi Ble.
The whole government headed by Soro, the leader of the former rebel New Forces, held a cabinet meeting which was chaired by Gbagbo.
The formation of a government for the divided west African country follows the creation last week of a new Independent Electoral Commission (CEI), after Gbagbo dissolved the previous one on February 12, the same day as he ditched Soro's last government.
The dual dissolutions plunged Ivory Coast into crisis and led to a wave of opposition protests in which at least seven people were killed.
National reconciliation
The main opposition coalition, the Houphouetist Rally for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), allied with the small Ivorian Labour Party (PIT), demanded the re-establishment of the commission before joining a government of "national reconciliation".
The RHDP, led by former president Henri Konan Bedie and former prime minister Alassane Ouattara, has kept control over the revised electoral commission and chairs the vote panel.
The government and the electoral commission are tasked with leading Ivory Coast into a presidential election that has been postponed six times since Gbagbo's mandate expired in 2005.
The vote is expected to be part of a process of reunification in the cocoa-rich Ivorian country, where the New Forces have controlled the north since a foiled coup bid against Gbagbo in September 2002.
The election is due to take place in "late April-early May", according to a timetable agreed among the parties concerned during a visit last month by the mediator, Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore.
Soro has said that he believes that his new government will have finished its task by June. Before the opposition joined it after arduous negotiations, the government included Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front and Soro's FN.
- SAPA