BY JIBRIL TURE

It was like the collapse of a national monument! Henri Konan Bédié, former president of the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire and chairman of the oldest party in one of the most important nations on the African continent, the Democratic Party of Cote d’Ivoire, died today, August 1st, in a major clinic of Abidjan at the age of 89. His family broke the news just a few hours ago.

No living politician in Cote d’Ivoire has the track record of a man who has served his country in a slew of positions, starting in 1960 when he became Cote d’Ivoire’s first ambassador to the United States and Canada, after the former French colony gained independence. For over a decade, from 1966 to 1977, he was the Minister of Economy and Finance of the nation that, one year later, became the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans. He served, from 1974 to 1976, as the first Chairman of the IMF and World Bank’s joint Development Committee; then as Special Advisor to the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation from 1978 to 1980.

He was elected to parliament in 1980 as representative of his native locality, Daoukro, in the east-central region. Rising higher on the ladder of national politics, he won the seat of Speaker of the National Assembly the same year, winning reelection in 1985 and 1990. This served as the steppingstone to rise to the highest office in the land after the demise of the nation’s founding father, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, on December 7th, 1993—not without a power struggle with then-Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara.

After completing the remainder of Houphouët-Boigny’s term, Bédié was elected president, but was toppled by a coup in December 1999.

That, however, did not stop the Sphinx, as his followers call him, to remain fully involved in national politics, despite the turbulence that permeated the shattered nation for decades after the death of its founder father, leading to two civil wars. A rather versatile politician over the several past years, Bédié, the staunch ally of the current president, Alassane Ouattara, during the latest civil war that shook the Ivorian nation to its roots, became the ally of both leaders’ one-time political adversary, former President Laurent Gbagbo.

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Yakouba Coulibaly, in Abidjan, contributed to this article.