Amadou Gon Coulibaly

Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly has announced a CFA1 700 billion (ˇ2...

The crucial first stage of the race to succeed President Alassane Ouattara ended quickly when Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly was hastily named as the candidate of the ruling Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix (RHDP) for October's presidential election...

However Ouattara appears unconvinced that either of his two potential chosen successors – the politically wooden Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly and or the Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko – can be counted on to deliver victory and protect the RHDP legacy...

President Alassane Dramane Ouattara had signalled his readiness to retire but has now postponed a final decision until mid-next year as he faces up to the reality that none of his most trusted political heirs – Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly Vice-President Daniel Kablan Duncan and Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko – is an obvious potential election favourite...

Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly remains the favourite but Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko has never taken his eye off the ball...

These were hitherto seen as the RDR's Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly or Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko and the PDCI vice-president Daniel Kablan Duncan or Energy Minister Thierry Tanoh or even the increasingly estranged Parliamentary Speaker Guillaume Soro (nominally RDR) (AC Vol 59 No 3 Jockeying for position and Vol 59 No 14 Move over grandad)...

The three protagonists will be former rebel leader and current Parliament Speaker Guillaume Soro defence minister and former presidential favourite Hamed Bakayoko and the latest anointed heir Amadou Gon Coulibaly the current Prime Minister...

On 4 July Ouattara dissolved the current government retaining Amadou Gon Coulibaly as Prime Minister but ordering him to purge the cabinet of PDCI members...

Continuing his steady ascent Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly got the second highest post first vice-president confirming his status as heir apparent at the expense of Bakayoko...

The new Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly will need to deal quickly and decisively with the raft of problems that have exploded in the first weeks of the year: two mutinies the first by soldiers the second by gendarmes and a strike by public sector workers (see Box Mutineers may be back for more)...