The Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), a key opposition party, is set to hold an extraordinary elective congress on May 14, 2025, to select a new official party president following the resignation of Tidjane Thiam.
Thiam stepped down on May 11, 2025, in an effort to prevent the judiciary from placing the party under state administration amid an ongoing legal battle questioning his eligibility as party leader. His candidacy for the upcoming congress has been approved by the party’s electoral committee.
A second aspirant, Diakité Bouakary Sidiki, was barred from contesting due to non-compliance with party statutes – specifically, not being a member of the Political Bureau and failing to pay the mandatory congress fee of 30 million CFA francs.
Thiam’s resignation was a strategic move, prompted by a legal challenge from Ms. Valérie Yapo, who argued that he was not legally Ivorian at the time of his election as PDCI president. In April, a court ruled that Thiam’s name be removed from the national electoral roll on grounds that he had lost Ivorian nationality upon acquiring French citizenship in 1987. Although he renounced his French citizenship in March 2025, any political actions taken before that renunciation risk being invalidated.
Despite the controversy, senior party figures have expressed strong support for Thiam. Speaking on May 13 at the PDCI headquarters in Abidjan, party vice-president Akossi Bendjo declared that if Thiam is elected on May 14, the PDCI will push for his candidacy in the upcoming presidential election set for October 25, 2025.
