Ivory Coast to appoint new govt after cabinet resigns

Bloomberg

Ivory Coast Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly will appoint a new cabinet after the government resigned as the main political alliance is increasingly divided over the nomination of its candidate in 2020 presidential elections.
Coulibaly was immediately reappointed to his post and has been asked to form a government with members of the ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace coalition and civil society, Patrick Achi, the presidency’s secretary-general, said. He didn’t give a reason for the decision.
The announcement comes as the two main parties in the ruling coalition, which are also the West African nation’s biggest political groups, are split over who gets to field the potential successor of President Alassane Ouattara.
A plan to turn the alliance into a single party has been delayed until after the elections because the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast, known by its acronym PDCI, said last month it
wants to appoint its own coalition candidate.
While the outgoing government was already dominated by members of Ouattara’s Rally of the Republicans party, the new cabinet will probably have even fewer ministers from the PDCI, according to Ousmane Zina, a political analyst at the University of Bouake. “Everyone has been expecting this,” Zina said.
“The question is which PDCI ministers will be the first to go.”