Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi will launch a unity government, his spokesperson said on Saturday, as he faces domestic pressure over his handling of an offensive by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern provinces.<\/p>\n
The M23’s capture of swathes of eastern Congo and valuable mineral deposits has fanned fears of a wider war and provoked some members of the fractious opposition to\u00a0openly predict\u00a0his presidency will not last.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Tshisekedi told a meeting of the ruling Sacred Union coalition not to be distracted by internal quarrels: “We must unite … let’s stand together to face the enemy.”<\/p>\n
Presidency spokesperson Tina Salama said Tshisekedi would form a government of national unity and make changes in the leadership of the coalition, without giving further details.<\/p>\n
Since the start of the year, Congo has faced back-to-back losses in North and South Kivu provinces, fueling criticism of the authorities’ military strategy.<\/p>\n
“His management is one of the causes of the current crisis,” said opposition figure Herve Diakiese, criticising the move to form a unity government.<\/p>\n
“Tshisekedi is more concerned with saving his power, whereas we are more concerned with saving the Congo, and this can be done with or without him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi will launch a unity government, his spokesperson said on Saturday, as he faces domestic pressure over his handling of an offensive by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern provinces. The M23’s capture of swathes of eastern Congo and valuable mineral deposits has fanned fears of a wider war and provoked some members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,33,1129],"tags":[1393,303,3813,1469,140,3814],"class_list":["post-15387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-east-africa","category-politics","category-security","tag-eastern-congo","tag-felix-tshisekedi","tag-herve-diakiese","tag-north-kivu","tag-rwanda","tag-south-kivu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}