ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Ivory Coast’s president dissolved the government and disbanded the election commission late Friday, throwing into doubt the political reconciliation process in a divided country that was about to hold elections.
“The government is dissolved,” President Laurent Gbagbo announced in a recorded message broadcast on national television, specifying that Prime Minister Guillaume Soro will 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, Robert Beugre Mambe, amid accusations he was behind an attempt to add almost 500,000 illegitimate voters onto the rolls.
In his 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 now-defunct government was the fruit of a peace agreement signed by Gbagbo’s government and the New Forces rebels in 2007 after a civil war that had split the world’s No. 1 cocoa producer into a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south.
