Kouadio Konan Bertin

Kouadio Konan Bertin (born December 26, 1968), known as KKB, is an Ivorian politician.

KKB became active in the youth wing of the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), supporting President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and then President Henri Konan Bédié, who succeeded him after his death in December 1993.

For his efforts, the young politician quickly gained the confidence and the ear of the head of state.

Instead, he created the Cell for Reflection and Concrete Action (CERAC) in 1994.

He obtained a master's degree in German, with a focus on corporate communication.

He considers himself "a pure product of Ivorian public education before the crisis."

He emerged on the political scene as an opponent of the coup that replaced Bédié with General Robert Guéï in December 1999.

While party elders sought to discreetly rid themselves of the former president by removing him as head of the party, KKB, then largely unknown to the general public, mobilized students in opposition to the military junta to demand the return of the exiled former president from France.

At the Extraordinary Party Congress on April 6–9, 2000, the attempt to oust Bédié as president of the PDCI failed.

In 2003, after Bédié returned from exile, KKB was elected youth president of the PDCI.

Dissent subsequently increased between the two main allied parties of the RHDP, with Bédié declaring that the alliance as it was in 2005 "no longer existed."

The PDCI then in effect became the primary opposition party against Ouattara.

He supported Bédié's candidacy in the first round of the 2010 presidential election, but the PDCI leader only received 25% of the vote and landed in third place, far behind incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo (FPI, 38%) and Alassane Ouattara (RDR, 32%).

After demanding a recount, Bédié eventually threw his support behind Ouattara, which proved decisive.

This was in line with an alliance, the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), formed five years earlier by a number of parties including the PDCI and the Rally of the Republicans (RDR).

He represented Port-Bouët in the National Assembly from 2011 to 2016.

In the 2011 Ivorian parliamentary election, KKB was elected to represent the Port-Bouët constituency with 93.81% of the vote.

The alliance initiated by Bédié and Ouattara subsequently went further than the mandates of the RHDP.

This caused a serious crisis within the PDCI, which at the October 2013 party congress had called for the candidacy of an "active PDCI activist" for the presidency.

KKB was the first to openly describe Bédié's move as "treason."

On September 17, 2014, the president of the PDCI announced "l'appel de Daoukro" ("the call of Daoukro"), in which he called on his party members to rally around Ouattara's candidacy, well ahead of the 2015 presidential election.

On December 5, 2014, KKB announced his candidacy for the 2015 Ivorian presidential election.

He ran for president for the first time in 2015, when he came in third.

On February 26, 2015, two days before the PDCI congress that would officially back Ouattara as the only RHDP candidate, KKB and three other party members (former Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, former Foreign Minister Amara Essy, and parliament member Jérôme Kablan Brou) announced their decision not to attend the event.

KKB predicted at the time that Bédié and his followers might leave the PDCI for the RDR, but he refused to leave his party and create another, arguing it would be a betrayal of the party's founder, Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

At the party congress, the "call of Daoukro" was adopted with "Brezhnevian unanimity," Le Monde wrote.

The decision to not put forward a PDCI candidate was approved by 98.84% of the party.

Critics claimed that the near-unanimity was attributable to the fact that the vote was taken by a public show of hands.

He said, "I am the candidate to save the PDCI. Because to not have a candidate in 2015 is to jointly put to death the party of Félix Houphouët-Boigny."

He submitted his independent candidacy to the Independent Electoral Commission on August 25, 2015.

His campaign was not successful, however.

In the election on October 25, he came in third place with 3.88% of the vote, behind the incumbent Outtara at 83.66% and the Ivorian Popular Front candidate Pascal Affi N’Guessan at 9.29%.

During a meeting in Bingerville on April 10, 2017, the PDCI agreed to appoint a candidate from its own ranks for the presidential election in 2020.

Two months later, KKB reconnected with his party.

He said: "Our split was about one thing: The PDCI giving up its candidacy in the presidential election."

He was one of the four candidates for the 2020 Ivorian presidential election, in which he received 1.99% of the vote.

Kouadio Konan Bertin was born in Lakota in southern Ivory Coast to a Dida mother, Delphine Dago Guizo, and a Baoulé father, Koffi Kouadio Mathieu.

He defines himself as "the fruit of an Ivorian crossbreed."

He is the oldest of six siblings.

As a student at the University of Abidjan, he opposed the dominance of the Student Federation of Ivory Coast, which he deemed too radical.