Committee set up to draft new constitution

Cote d’Ivoire’s government has announced the setting up of a 27-member committee to draft a new constitution and electoral law and “various measures for the organisation of free and fair elections”. According to a decree approved at a cabinet meeting on Friday, the commission is to submit the drafts to the government by 31 March, while a referendum is to be held in April on the constitution and the electoral law. The decree stated: “The adoption of the electoral law by referendum will pave the way for the organisation of presidential, legislative and municipal elections...” However, it set no dates for the polls, which were to have been held in the last quarter of this year. Ivoirian President Henri Konan Bedie was overthrown by the military on 24 December 1999.