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 overthrew Lissouba in a civil war to return to power in 1997.
Earlier this month, he announced he would be seeking a new five-year term, which, according to the constitution, would be his last.
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).
It will end on March 13, with the first round of voting on March 15.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Contested elections
Congo-Brazzaville, a former French colony, is rich in oil but nearly half of its six million people live below the poverty line.
Sassou Nguesso’s political opponents have systematically contested all of his election victories since 2002.
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.
They had strongly disputed the official results, which gave Sassou Nguesso 60 percent of the vote.
NGOs and civil society groups regularly condemn violations of civil liberties and threats against political opponents.
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.
