Ivory Coast’s election commission on Tuesday declared the ruling party has won an absolute majority in parliament, three days after the parliamentary vote, reported Africa News.
According to results published on Tuesday by the country’s electoral commission, President Alassane Ouattara’s Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party won 137 out of 254 contested seats. A coalition of ex-President Henri Konan Bedie’s Democratic Party of Ivory Coast and a party aligned to former President Laurent Gbagbo came second with 50 seats.
Notably, there are 255 seats in the National Assembly, but balloting in one department was postponed due to the death of one of the candidates. The turnout in Saturday’s election was 37.88 percent, the same as in the last legislative elections in 2016.
Ivory Coast’s parliamentary election result comes just months after Ouattara won a third term in October’s election, which was boycotted by the opposition.
The major opposition parties were against Ouattara’s decision to stand for another term, alleging it was unlawful despite the Constitutional Council has cleared him to run again. They decided to contest in the legislative elections after the government agreed to additional electoral commission seats for opposition parties.
The election was marred by violence that killed 87 people and injured many others. But the parliamentary election passed off peacefully without any violence, in a sign of hope that the West African country can emerge from recent violence.
On Monday, the main opposition PDCI alleged electoral fraud and Gbagbo’s FPI party called on its supporters to remain calm and await the official results.
Tuesday’s result shows that the largest opposition grouping will be a coalition formed by PDCI members and Gbagbo supporters. It is worth noting that FPI had boycotted all polls since the arrest for Gbagbo in 2011 and his subsequent transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
