Founded during the colonial era in 1946, as an outgrowth of the African Agricultural Union, and initially affiliated with the French Communist Party,[4] it became the only legal party in the country upon independence in 1960. For the next 30 years, the PDCI and the government were effectively one. Every five years, its founder and leader, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, was automatically elected to a five-year term as president of the republic and confirmed in office via a referendum. At the same time, a single list of PDCI candidates was returned to the National Assembly.
All adult Ivorians were required to be members of the party,[5] which was considered the primary intermediary between the government and the people. Even after opposition parties were legalised in 1990, the PDCI continued to dominate Ivorian politics. At the 1990 elections, Houphouët-Boigny was reelected with an implausible 81 percent of the vote, and the party won all but 12 seats in the legislature.
Houphouët-Boigny led the party from its formation until his death in 1993. A year later, acting president of the republic Henri Konan Bédié became the party's second leader. He served out Houphouët-Boigny's seventh term, and was elected in his own right in 1995 with over 96 percent of the vote; the opposition parties had boycotted the election in protest of new eligibility requirements that they deemed unfair. The party lost power when Bédié was ousted in a December 1999 coup.
The PDCI announced in early 2000 that it would hold a congress to choose new leadership, and Bédié denounced this as a "putsch";[6] the party decided to retain Bédié in the leadership, however.[7] In August, Bédié and four other PDCI members registered as candidates in the October 2000 presidential election;[8] shortly afterward, Emile Constant Bombet, who had served as Interior Minister under Bédié, defeated Bédié for the PDCI presidential nomination.[9] Bombet and Bédié were both barred from running by the Constitutional Court in early October, and on October 10 Bédié called for a boycott of the election.[10]
Unlike many former single parties in Africa, the PDCI has made a good account of itself since losing power. In the parliamentary election held on 10 December 2000 and 14 January 2001, the party won 94 out of 225 seats.
