RDA, in contrast, continued its efforts to build broad political bases and build the national RDA parties throughout Africa. The result of these efforts was that the RDA saw increasing power from 1951 until 1955. This was most punctuated with the rise in Guinea of Sékou Touré to political prominence as the head of the Democratic Party of Guinea . As a union organizer, Touré had significant ties with the Communists throughout French West Africa and thus connected quickly with the Communist-affiliated members of the RDA. His importance to the RDA's wider objectives was so large that he was named the head of the RDA coalition in the National Assembly in 1953. In the 1955 meeting of the Coordinating Council the party similarly consolidated around the new party identity. First, they decided that Ruben Um Nyobé's Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC) was no longer affiliated with the RDA because of its radical positions against the French state. Second, it settled a dispute in Niger with multiple parties claiming to be the RDA affiliate: supporting Hamani Diori's party over that of Djibo Bakary. The party building activities set the RDA up to perform well in the upcoming election. Return to power and dissolution: 1956–58 Without the active suppression of earlier elections and the end of the temporary IOM-RDA rapprochement, the RDA became the largest party from the African colonies earning nine seats in the French legislative elections of 1956 (from only having 3 in the period of 1951-1955). The IOM saw the largest losses going from having fourteen deputies to only seven. The remaining seats saw six deputies go to persons allied with the Gaullist Party, four deputies allied with the Socialist party, and two who affiliated with Catholic conservatives (Apithy and Barthélemy Boganda). The RDA legislators were now more than half of the total membership of the UDSR party, which actually resulted in the party changing its name to the UDSR-RDA during this period. Because of this, when the IOM tried once again to form an alliance with the RDA, they were rebuffed because the RDA had a solid alliance with significant power and the IOM wanted to remain with the MRP. In addition, because of the important role of the RDA within the UDSR, Houphouët-Boigny was able to become a Minister within the French cabinet, the first representative from French West Africa or French Equatorial Africa to