New electoral commission for I Coast
2010-02-26 08:41
Abidjan - A new Independent Electoral Commission was installed in Ivory Coast Friday with an opposition figure in charge after two weeks of crisis following the dissolution of the previous commission and the government.
After a day of tough haggling, Youssouf Bakayoko, foreign minister in the previous government, was elected by the CEI to preside over the body, permanent secretary Auguste Miremont said.
Bakayoko's opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI, the former sole party), thus retained the top post in the commission made up of representatives of the main political parties.
It will have the task of organising a presidential election, put off since 2005 and now set for late April-early May, that should end the crisis started by a failed coup in 2002 that cut the country in two.
Ivory Coast's incomplete new government led by Prime Minister Guillaume Soro on Thursday cancelled its first cabinet meeting to "give priority" to setting up a new electoral commission.
Soro on Tuesday announced he was forming a new 28-member cabinet, with 17 of the posts already named, mainly going to members of President Laurent Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) and Soro's ex-rebel New Forces (FN).
Contestation and demonstration
Soro said the remaining 11 positions would be filled by the opposition, but the main opposition Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace on Tuesday said that its watchword would remain "contestation and demonstration" until the electoral commission had been "re-established."
Gbagbo caused an uproar when he on February 12 dissolved the former CEI and accused its chairman, opposition member Robert Buegre Mambe, of "fraud" in the voters' roll. The same day he sacked the government and ordered Soro to form a new one.
Talks were held behind the scenes all day on Thursday on the make-up of the new CEI and the government, against a background of tension. At least seven people have been killed in nationwide demonstrations since Gbagbo's dual dissolutions.
Presidential elections in Ivory Coast have been postponed six times since Gbagbo's mandate expired in 2005, while the cocoa-rich west African country has been divided in two since a foiled coup against him in 2002.
Soro's FN controls the north, while pro-Gbagbo forces are dominant in the south.