afrol News, 30 May - Côte d'Ivoire is moving fast on its road to organising credible, free and fair elections. It is against this background that the country’s independent electoral commission (CEI) conducted training for over 30 central electoral commissioners.

The trained central commissioners have been drawn from the political parties and movements that had signed the Marcoussis accord, presidency, parliament, home affairs ministry, among others.

Central commissioners will be supported by the United Nations Operations in Côte d'Ivoire and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Côte d'Ivoire, a country that had been divided by the 2002 September rebel incursion in the north, is billed to organise general elections before the year ends.

The head of CEI, Mambé Beugré, valued prioritisation of capacity building for all their electoral staff.

The body is mandated to organise presidential, legislative, county and municipal elections in Côte d'Ivoire Electoral trainees acquired knowledge of the structure and organisation of the electoral commission, the role of various stakeholders in the electoral process as well as the effective management of a local electoral commission or branch.

The commission is planning to conduct similar trainings for its regional commissioners.

Since he had signed the 4 March Ouagadougou accord with the leaders of his country’s northern rebels, the Ivorian President, Laurent Gbagbo, appointed the leader of Nouvelles Forces (FN) Guillaume Soro as the Prime Minister until elections are held later this year.

Mr Soro has in turn formed a government of national unity. Ivorian leaders have now embarked on repairing the damages caused by the civil war. A week ago, Ivorian rebels voluntarily surrendered their arms to Mr Gbagbo who in turn handed them over to the representative of the United Nations Secretary General to Côte d'Ivoire, Abou Moussa.

The Ivorian leader had asked his country people to unite for development of their country.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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