Times Live reports the following on Ivory Coast:

Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara dissolved his government on Wednesday ahead of a planned government reshuffle, the secretary general of the president’s office said.

Particularly interesting is the following passage [bolded emphasis mine]:

Ouattara came to power in a deeply divisive 2010 election. He won the presidential runoff, but longtime ruler Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede, and used the army to hold on to power. It took United Nations airstrikes to finally release Gbagbo’s grip on power.

It is reported that it was a deeply divisive election, and a Wiki verification of this shows that support was split pretty much 50/50 at the polls.

The question is: Why would the UN get involved in domestic affairs in Ivory Coast, especially if support was just about 50/50? Is it worth bombing the government to get rid of a guy who still has still strong public support?

Quick google on Ouattara yields the following:

He was an economist for the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C.^[3] from 1968 to 1973, and afterwards he was the BCEAO’s Chargé de Mission in Paris from 1973 to 1975.^[2][3] With the BCEAO, he was then Special Advisor to the Governor and Director of Research from February 1975 to December 1982 and Vice Governor from January 1983 to October 1984. From November 1984 to October 1988 he was Director of the African Department at the IMF, and in May 1987 he additionally became Counsellor to the Managing Director at the IMF.^[3]

Clearly Ouattara is entrenched in the western power circles (through the IMF), and the US/France wanted a puppet in, and Gbagbo out. So they got rid of him, and put in their man, Ouattara.

That’s Nato’s idea of democracy for you.