Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has dissolved the government and disbanded the election commission, throwing into doubt the political reconciliation process in a divided country that was about to hold elections.
“The government is dissolved,” Gbagbo said in a recorded message broadcast on national television late on Friday, specifying that Prime Minister Guillaume Soro would be asked to stay on to form a new government.
The move comes two months after the government last failed to hold presidential elections to either re-elect or replace Gbagbo whose term expired five years ago. A date for the election has been set — and then canceled — every year since 2005.
Tension rose this past week after Gbagbo’s party demanded the resignation of the head of the independent election commission amid accusations he was behind an attempt to add almost 500,000 illegitimate voters onto the rolls. Opposition supporters, meanwhile, accuse the ruling party of trying to disqualify voters that are not allied with Gbagbo.
On Thursday, representatives of the political factions attended a negotiation session in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighboring Burkina Faso, but could not agree on whether Robert Beugre Mambe, the head of the election commission, should step down.
In his recorded statement, Gbagbo said he was disbanding the election commission.
“Mr Mambe is running an illegal operation,” Gbagbo said. “I want a government that serves the interests of the Ivorian people and not the orders of political parties.”
“The mission of this new government will be, under the authority of the president and the prime minister, to complete the final actions necessary to bring Ivory Coast out of its political crisis,” Gbagbo said.
The now-defunct government was the fruit of a peace agreement signed by Gbagbo’s government and the New Forces rebels in 2007 following a civil war that had split the world’s No. 1 cocoa producer into a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south.
The unity government was composed of 33 ministers from all political parties and rebel factions.
Whether this means the country’s tense political situation will dissolve back into civil war is yet to be seen, said Rinaldo Depagne, a West Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group.
A hopeful sign is that Soro, the former leader of the rebels, has been asked to stay on.
“For the time, the Gbagbo-Soro alliance holds,” Depagne said.
“But two questions remain: Will Soro be able to form an acceptable government? And how will the opposition react?” he said.
“There is always a risk of violence here. We’ve seen that over the last weeks. This is a country in crisis, there are lots of arms lying around, and there’s a history of instability,” Depagne said.
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