An alliance between two parties that has governed Ivory Coast since 2010 broke down on Thursday, two months ahead of elections. The Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI) announced it was “withdrawing” from an initiative by President Alassane Ouattara to create a joint party with his own organisation, the Rally of the Republicans (RDR). It added that it would contest municipal and regional elections in October “under its own banner”. The PDCI and RDR have been in an electoral alliance since 2005 — a partnership that brought Ouattara to power after elections in 2010 and enabled his re-election in 2015.
Ouattara hoped to consolidate the arrangement by bringing the two partners together in a unified party called the RHDP that would have been virtually unbeatable at the ballot box.
The PDCI had demanded that as a quid pro quo, the joint party’s challenger for the 2020 presidential elections had to come from within its ranks — a condition that Ouattara rejected.
Full Article: Governing coalition in Ivory Coast buckles as election nears – Journal du Cameroun.
