After seeing him endure the years, Ivorians had almost come to think he was immortal.
According to several family sources, Henri Konan Bédié passed away this Tuesday, 1 August, in the early evening, in Abidjan. Having fallen ill in his fiefdom of Daoukro, he had been urgently transferred to the Polyclinique Internationale Sainte Anne-Marie in Abidjan (Sogemed-Pisam).
Monument
A pillar of Ivorian politics has left us. At 89 years old, he had done it all and seen it all.
Ambassador to the United States in the 1960s, he would later become minister of economy and finance under Félix Houphouët-Boigny, before becoming president of the Assemblée Nationale, then head of state on Houphouët-Boigny’s death in 1993.
In 1999, he was overthrown in a coup led by General Robert Guéï. This episode would forever mark his relationship to politics.
This cigar aficionado, sparing with words, never ceased wanting to regain this lost power. For himself, but also for his party, the Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), which he chaired since 1994.
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