by Bryan Pearson

   ABIDJAN, Jan 22 (AFP) - Outgoing finance minister Mamadou Koulibaly was
elected parliamentary speaker Monday when Ivory Coast's parliament met for
the
first time since the military staged a coup in December 1999.
   Members of the newly-elected legislature overwhelming backed Koulibaly,
a
member of President Laurent Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) and,
significantly, a northerner; he amassed 213 of the 216 votes cast.
   The sitting of parliament and the election of the speaker, the second
most
powerful position in the land, mark further steps along the road to full
restoration of elected government in the troubled west African country.
   Analysts said the choice of Koulibaly was significant in that he hails
from
the north of the country, where members of a rival political party, the
Rally
of Republicans (RDR), boycotted legislative elections in December and
January
in protest at the exclusion of their leader, Alassane Ouattara, after his
nationalisty was challenged.
   Gbagbo has been at pains to counter claims by the RDR that the
Christian-dominated south is sidelining from political institutions the
mainly
Muslim north.
   The other candidate for Monday's vote, outgoing interior minister Emile
Boga Doudou, withdrew from the contest at the beginning of the session.
Three
ballot papers were spoiled.
   The formerly ruling Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI), which did not
put
up a candidate, announced at the beginning of the parliamentary session it,
too, would rally behind Koulibaly.
   In the elections for the 225 legislative seats -- two of which remain
vacant -- the FPI won 96 seats to 94 for the PDCI.
   The FPI has since concluded a parliamentary alliance with 14 of 22
deputies
elected as independents.
   The 14 were expelled from the PDCI, which held power for four decades
before the coup, after supporting the candidacy of former military ruler
General Robert Guei in presidential elections in October.
   Guei, who swept to power in the country's first-ever putsch on Christmas
Eve 1999, ran in presidential polls 10 months later but was accused of
rigging
the vote.
   The general was routed by a popular uprising and Gbagbo, a longtime
socialist opposition leader, was declared the winner.
   Other parties represented in the assembly are the Ivorian Workers' Party
(PIT, an ally of the FPI) with four seats, and the Movement of Forces for
the
Future and the Ivory Coast Union of Democrats, with one seat each.
   The RDR won five seats despite its boycott, in what a party official
described as "an error".
   The party announced at the weekend that the five deputies would not take
their places in the new assembly.
   The Ivory Coast government resigned on Sunday to allow some ministers
elected to parliament to take their seats -- the country's constitution
does
not allow a person to hold a post of minister at the same times as that of
MP.
   Gbagbo immediately re-appointed Pascal Affi N'Guessan as prime minister
and
gave him 72 hours to name a new government "which takes into account the
political configuration of Ivory Coast today."
   Nine ministers were elected as members of parliament.
   Koulibaly, 43, an economics professor, has been minister since January
2000
-- first in the transitional government following the coup, and then in the
government of Gbagbo after he assumed office.
   so-bp/jlr

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