Former Ivorian President Henri Konan Bédié died at the age of 89 in a private hospital in Abidjan, his party announced in a statement on Tuesday.
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”, indicates the document.
“He died at the International Polyclinic of Sainte Anne-Marie (PISAM),” said a member of his party’s communication.
The party of the former president salutes 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 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 -, an election scheduled for the next party congress in June.
The former president had called on members of his party to unite to win the next presidential election, 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 former President Bédié overthrown by a coup.
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.
Also nicknamed the “Sphinx”, Henri Konan Bédié was once one of the main political enemies of current President Alassane Ouattara. He then agreed to support him in the second round of the 2010 presidential election and during the Ivorian crisis (2010-2011) that followed, then when he was re-elected in 2016.
Mr. Bédié had returned since 2018 to the opposition where he approached 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”.
This nationalist concept that the former head of state and other political leaders had used to try to prevent Alassane Ouattara from running for president in 1995 in this country of high immigration, has, according to many observers, contributed to the rise in tension during the decade of armed crisis which ended in the violence of 2010-2011 which left 3,000 dead.
In Côte d’Ivoire, a country where a significant part of the 29 million inhabitants comes from immigration, the question of nationality has been extremely sensitive for twenty years, especially when the concept of “ivoirité” appeared. .
02/08/2023 02:56:18 – Abidjan (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
