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<\/strong><\/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":6,"featured_media":12245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":20,"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","show_comment_section":"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":"AFP","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":[28,33],"tags":[1459],"class_list":["post-20028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-politics","tag-congo-brazzaville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20029,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028\/revisions\/20029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}