2023-08-02 02:38:49
A page in the political history of Côte d’Ivoire is turning. Former President Henri Konan Bédié died at the age of 89 in a private hospital in Abidjan, a member of his party’s communications team announced on Tuesday evening.
“He died at the International Polyclinic Sainte Anne-Marie (PISAM),” said this source. Tuesday evening, a crowd began to form in front of his residence in Abidjan.
The presidential still in the lead
Head of State from 1993 to 1999, Henri Konan Bédié had not ruled out being a candidate in the next presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire. He had been designated at the end of March as the sole candidate to succeed him as President of the Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) – the main opposition movement and party of the first Ivorian president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny -, whose election is scheduled at the next party congress in June.
At the end of March, he called on the members of his party to unite to win the next presidential election in 2025, which will follow the municipal and regional elections scheduled for September 2. Henri Konan Bédié had also been nominated as a candidate in the last presidential election in 2020. Former single party, the PDCI was in power from 1960, during the independence of Côte d’Ivoire, to 1999, end of the mandate of the former President Bédié overthrown in a coup.
Ambassador at 26, Minister at 32
Born on May 5, 1934 in the village of Dadiékro (center) within a family of cocoa planters, “HKB” wanted to be the heir and successor of Houphouët-Boigny, of Baoulé ethnicity like him. A time allied with President Alassane Ouattara elected for the first time in 2010, Henri Konan Bédié had returned since 2018 to the opposition where he got closer to the supporters of Laurent Gbagbo. Appointed ambassador at 26, Minister of the Economy at 32, he was known in particular for his nationalist or even xenophobic concept, “Ivoirité”.
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