The campaign for next month’s presidential election in Congo-Brazzaville begins on Saturday, with 82-year-old President Denis Sassou Nguesso seemingly assured of extending his decades in power.<\/p>\n
The career military officer first led Congo under the one-party system from 1979 to 1992 before losing the country’s first multi-party elections to former prime minister Pascal Lissouba.<\/p>\n
He overthrew Lissouba in a civil war to return to power in 1997.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, he announced he would be seeking a new five-year term, which, according to the constitution, would be his last.<\/p>\n
Campaigning begins on Saturday on the Atlantic coast in the country’s economic and oil capital, Pointe-Noire, with a rally held by the president’s Congolese Labour Party (PCT).<\/p>\n
It will end on March 13, with the first round of voting on March 15.<\/p>\n
Six opposition candidates have formally confirmed they will be standing, including 34-year-old Destin Gavin, from the Republican Movement (MR), who is in the race for the first time.<\/p>\n
But the fragmented and muzzled opposition stands little chance of winning, with the ruling party promising a “wave” in favour of its “patriarch”, according to roadside campaign posters.<\/p>\n
Sassou Nguesso is one of Africa’s longest-ruling leaders after Paul Biya of Cameroon, who has been in office since 1982, and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took power in a 1979 coup.<\/p>\n
He was the victor in 2002 and 2009 and able to stand again — and win — the 2016 and 2021 votes after a constitutional change that removed the upper age limit of 70 and extended the maximum number of terms of office.<\/p>\n
Contested elections<\/b><\/p>\n
Congo-Brazzaville, a former French colony, is rich in oil but nearly half of its six million people live below the poverty line.<\/p>\n
Sassou Nguesso’s political opponents have systematically contested all of his election victories since 2002.<\/p>\n
Two candidates who ran in the 2016 elections — General Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko and Andre Okombi Salissa — are still being held after convictions for “attacking internal security” in 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n
They had strongly disputed the official results, which gave Sassou Nguesso 60 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n
NGOs and civil society groups regularly condemn violations of civil liberties and threats against political opponents.<\/p>\n
The president is nonetheless reputed to have brought a degree of stability back to the country scarred by civil war in the 1990s and to a region plagued by conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The campaign for next month’s presidential election in Congo-Brazzaville begins on Saturday, with 82-year-old President Denis Sassou Nguesso seemingly assured of extending his decades in power. The career military officer first led Congo under the one-party system from 1979 to 1992 before losing the country’s first multi-party elections to former prime minister Pascal Lissouba. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":5171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1246,523,831],"class_list":{"0":"post-5172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-policy","8":"tag-africa-elections","9":"tag-coup","10":"tag-denis-sassou-nguesso"},"yoast_head":"\n