Former Ivory Coast leader Henri Konan Bedie is dead at the age of 89, according to his party.
In a statement, the “Ivory Coast Democratic Party-African Democratic Rally (PDCI-RDA) is deeply saddened” to announce Bedie’s “sudden death” on Tuesday in an Abidjan hospital.
An AFP correspondent reported that a crowd had started to assemble outside of his apartment in the capital. Bedie, a career politician born in 1934 to a family of cocoa planters, was chosen to succeed Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the Ivory Coast’s founding president, who ruled the West African country from its independence from France in 1960 until his passing in 1993 at the age of 88. From 1993 to 1999, when the military deposed him in the nation’s first-ever coup, Bedie presided as president.
“For us in the PDCI, age is an asset. Age unites experience and also competence,” Bedie told journalists ahead of the October 2020 presidential election, which was won by current President Alassane Ouattara amid an opposition boycott. Bedie came third with 1.7 percent of the vote.
Numerous employees on the nation’s cocoa plantations were impacted by the nationalist policy, which discriminated against immigrants in favour of those having two Ivorian parents. Bedie and other political figures had attempted to exploit the law to block Ouattara from running for president in 1995 since it was believed that he had a father from the neighbouring country of Burkina Faso.
The action ran counter to Houphouet-Boigny’s persistent efforts to maintain unity and contributed to the unrest and war that began in 2000 and was resolved in 2011. In the 2010 presidential election, Bedie finished third, behind Ouattara and the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo. During the post-election turmoil and for the first six years of his rule, he backed Ouattara, but they later argued once more.
Aimé Henri Konan Bedie was born in Dadiékro, Daoukro Department on 5 May 1934. After studying in France, he became Cote D’Ivoire’s first ambassador to the United States and Canada following independence in 1960, and from 1966 to 1977 he served in the government as Minister of Economy and Finance.
While serving as Finance Minister, Bédié became the first Chairman of the IMF and World Bank’s joint Development Committee, holding that post from 1974 to 1976. He was Special Advisor to the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation from 1978 to 1980.
In 1980, Bedie was elected to the National Assembly of Ivory Coast, and he was then elected as President of the National Assembly in December 1980. He was re-elected as President of the National Assembly in 1985 and 1990.
