In Ivory Coast, this is a new blow to the PDCI a year and a half before the presidential election. Senate president and former Prime Minister Jeannot Ahoussou Kouadio is joining the RHDP and thus leaving Henri Konan Bédié's party. He announced it at a senate seminar on Wednesday, confirming persistent rumors in recent weeks.

As has now become its habit, the PDCI officially remains silent. Even though in Henri Konan Bédié's entourage they describe it as a "non-event". Yet Jeannot Ahoussou Kouadio, vice president of the party where he built his entire political career, had until recently appeared to be a man apart.

Unlike his former National Assembly colleague Guillaume Soro, who was ordered to choose between his position or his freedom of movement, Jeannot Ahoussou Kouadio had managed to remain Senate president while remaining—at least in appearance—PDCI.

Despite injunctions to those refusing to join the RHDP to "return the seat", he did not appear at the presidential party's congress in late January, which some saw as a renewed sign of allegiance to Henri Konan Bédié. In recent times, he was presented as the last channel of discussion or possible vector of rapprochement between Bédié and Alassane Ouattara.

His speech on April 11 last, during the installation of the Senate in Yamoussoukro and his calls for rapprochement illustrated this. An installation during which, moreover, relations between the president of the Republic and the Senate president were ostensibly warm, even though he was said a few days before to be close to resigning.

Jeannot Ahoussou Kouadio thus confirmed on Wednesday that he was joining the RHDP. This membership will moreover be formalized once the Senate president has explained his decision to the residents of his city in early June.