APA – Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) Former Ivorian president Henri Konan Bedie passed away on Tuesday August 1, 2023 at the Polyclinique Internationale Sainte Marie (PISAM) in Cocody, east of Abidjan, at the age of 89.
According to sources close to the former Ivorian head of state, he was rushed by helicopter from Daoukro, his home village in the east of the country, to the Polyclinique Internationale Sainte Marie but was unable to survive his illness.
Henri Konan Bedie, nicknamed “HKB,” succeeded the late Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the first President of the Republic from December 7, 1993 to December 24, 1999. He went on to lead the ‘Parti Democratique
de Cote d’Ivoire’ (PDCI), founded by the “Father” of the country’s independence.
National Assembly Speaker from 1980, he became Head of State on the death of Felix Houphouet-Boigny in 1993. Elected two years later in the presidential election, he was overthrown by a coup d’Etat led by General Robert Guei in 1999.
Supported by the PDCI, of which he is president, he stood again in the 2010 presidential election, where he came third in the first round; he then supported the candidacy of Alassane Ouattara, who emerged victorious from the 2010-2011 crisis.
He supports Alassane Ouattara for a second term in 2015. Later, the PDCI refused to join the ‘Rassemblement des Houphouetistes pour la Democratie et la Paix’ (RHDP), the party chaired by Cote d’Ivoire’s current head of state.
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