Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara on Thursday named Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko as the new prime minister after his predecessor Amadou Gon Coulibaly, reported Reuters.
Coulibaly died suddenly earlier this month, a few days after returning back from France where he underwent two months of medical treatment.
Bakayoko had served as the country’s interim prime minister when Coulibaly was away for treatment. He also served as the minister of new information and communication technology in the national unity government from 2003 to 2011, during a decade of crisis in Ivory Coast.
The statement released from the presidency confirmed that he 55-year-old Bakayoko will retain his position as defence minister in his new post.
Coulibaly’s death left the country’s ruling RHDP party scrambling to choose a replacement candidate ahead of October’s presidential election, as he had been handpicked to run as the candidate to succeed Ouattara.
Although Bakayoko was being considered a possible replacement for Gon Coulibaly as the ruling party’s presidential candidate, but the party on Wednesday formally asked Ouattara to seek another term.
Ouattara, who had announced in March that he would step down after a decade in office, said he would take some time before making a decision. His candidacy for the upcoming October election could spark accusations of abuse of democracy under the country’s two-term presidential limits. Ouattara and his supporters contend that a change to the constitution in 2015 gives him the right to seek a third term.
On Wednesday, Ivory Coast’s electoral commission promised to conduct a fair election in October, an election which is considered as the greatest test yet of the tenuous stability achieved since a brief civil war in 2010 and 2011 that killed more than 3,000 people.
“Our primary objective is to make our process credible and transparent,” the electoral commission president, Ibrahime Coulibaly Kuibert, told Reuters.
