The “Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire-African Democratic Rally (PDCI-RDA) is deeply saddened” to announce “the sudden death” of Henri Konan Bédié, which occurred “Tuesday […] in Abidjan”. It is with these words that the news of the disappearance of the man who led the country after the disappearance of President Houphouët-Boigny was made public. “He died at the Polyclinique internationale Sainte-Anne-Marie (PISAM),” a member of his party’s communications said earlier. The political family of the former president hails in the press release a “great statesman, who spared no sacrifice for peace in Côte d’Ivoire”. Tuesday evening, a crowd began to form in front of his residence in Abidjan, noted an AFP journalist.
Head of State from 1993 to 1999, Henri Konan Bédié had not ruled out being a candidate for the next presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire in 2025. He had been designated at the end of March as the sole candidate for his succession to the presidency of 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 for the next party congress in June. Henri Konan Bédié had also been nominated as a candidate in the last presidential election, in 2020. The octogenarian had been able to discourage all attempts by younger generations to replace him within his party.
He was nicknamed the “sphinx”, perhaps to take revenge against the putsch that overthrew him in 1999, or against those who accuse him of having failed to manage the legacy of the “father of independence”. Felix Houphouët-Boigny. Born on May 5, 1934 in the village of Dadiékro (center) into a family of cocoa planters, “HKB” wanted to be the heir and successor of Houphouët-Boigny, of Baoulé ethnicity like him. Ambassador at 26, Minister of the Economy at 32, Mr. Bédié, whose career had come to a halt due to accusations of corruption, had overcome these problems to establish himself as the natural dolphin of Houphouët-Boigny and control without sharing the movement founded by his elder, the PDCI.
At this time, he launched the concept of Ivorianity to exclude from the presidential race a certain Alassane Ouattara, known as “ADO” – the current Ivorian president – accused of being Burkinabe. HKB had regularly ventured into this terrain by castigating “outsiders”. Elected president in 1995 without much competition, he surfs on nationalism, but his presidency, undermined by corruption, collapses in a few hours at Christmas 1999 in the face of a mutiny of soldiers which turns into a putsch, the first in history. from the country. He wanted “revenge for this mishandled putsch. And on Ouattara, whom he supported (in 2010 and 2015) but who, according to him, did not respect his commitment to restore power to him (in 2020), “said an observer. “But above all” he did not want to “remain in history as the one who lost the power of the PDCI of Houphouët”, he added. “He is responsible for all the ills of this country,” said a communications specialist, who asked not to be named. “It was he who introduced the worm of ivoirité into the fruit”, he lamented, mentioning “frequent inter-community violence”.
A lover of cigars and fine wines, HKB, who many described as “very close to his pennies”, had approached his former enemy Alassane Dramane Ouattara in 2005 to create the Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la democratie et la paix (RHDP). , electoral alliance between Ouattara’s party and the PDCI. After a honeymoon with the head of state, who had Abidjan’s third bridge named after Bédié, HKB again fell out with ADO in 2018, because of the presidential election. A party official saw in HKB “a fine tactician who weathered all storms” and was able to convince “the young guns” of the PDCI to support him again.
