AfricaNews Monitoring Team
The ruling coalition party in Ivory Coast being led by President Alassane Ouattara's has won the majority seats in that country's parliamentary elections with 80 percent of the seats. According to results from the December 11 poll announced by election commission Chief Youssouf Bakayoko, Ouattara's ruling RDR party took 127 of the National Assembly's 255 seats while his allied PDCI party took 77 seats.
Bakayoko said turnout was 36 percent, slightly higher than in Ivory Coast's last parliamentary poll in 2000, despite a boycott by the main opposition party allied to former leader Laurent Gbagbo, now facing war crimes charges at The Hague.
Ouattara won a November 2010 presidential election but was only able to take power in April after fighters supporting him invaded the economic capital Abidjan and arrested Gbagbo, who had refused to step down.
The election was described as generally peaceful allayed fears of a repeat of the violence and disturbances that marked the country’s presidential election last year.
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