Internal challenger of former head of state Henri Konan Bédié, Kouadio Konan Bertin refuses the invalidation of his candidacy for the party’s nomination by the ad hoc committee. He is appealing against this decision. If this decision is upheld, he does not rule out running as a non-party candidate.
For the moment, it should be noted that I am a candidate for the PDCI-RDA and that my wish is to be the candidate of this party. The soap opera is not yet over, so we cannot expect to disown it. The time of single candidacies is over, it is even in the interest of President Henri Konan Bédié that he has an internal opponent within the PDCI-RDA, if only to legitimize his candidacy, if he were to be elected at the convention. My candidacy, as I have already indicated, was an opportunity and it will have the merit of fueling the internal democratic debate. In the event of my candidature being definitively rejected, I will let it go, but I think that an independent candidature is the most likely thing.
As a reminder, President Henri Konan Bédié himself in 2000, when the convention had chosen Émile Constant BOMBÉ as the PDCI-RDA candidate, Henri Konan Bédié maintained his independent candidacy against that of Emile Constant BOMBÉ. So ‘‘I wouldn’t be the first to open the ballot for independent candidatures to the PDCI-RDA.’’ declared Kouadio Konan Bertin.