Congolese opposition leader Moise Katumbi has filed his candidacy to run for president in December polls during which President Felix Tshisekedi will seek re-election for a second term in office, his party said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Katumbi, a millionaire businessman and former governor of the copper-rich Katanga region, will also be competing against\u00a0Martin Fayulu<\/a>\u00a0– who came second in the last election – and Nobel Prize-winning gynaecologist\u00a0Denis Mukwege<\/a>\u00a0among others.<\/p>\n Tshisekedi, the son of Congo’s long-term opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, had a turbulent first term embroiled in economic hardship, disease outbreaks and a surge in militia attacks in the east.<\/p>\n “Our country is condemned neither to war, nor to insecurity, nor to bad governance, nor to repeated violations of the rule of law and freedoms,” Katumbi said in the statement.<\/p>\n His Ensemble pour la Republique party will reveal a programme in coming weeks that it says will aim to restore security, create jobs and improve social services.<\/p>\n While Tshisekedi came to power promising to end decades of political repression and corruption, rights groups, international allies and rivals accuse him of being\u00a0just as repressive\u00a0as his predecessors.<\/p>\n His government denies accusations that rights and liberties are being curbed in Congo.<\/p>\n The months leading up to the Dec. 20 vote have been tense, with complaints about delays and alleged irregularities in voter registration that have sparked protests.<\/p>\n The spokesman for Katumbi’s party, Cherubin Okende, was\u00a0killed\u00a0in July.<\/p>\n Ensemble pour la Republique denounced a “dramatic context of repression”, citing Okende’s assassination and a\u00a0crackdown\u00a0on opposition protests last month.<\/p>\n Katumbi, 58, left the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016 after he was accused by the government of hiring mercenaries as part of a plot against Tshisekedi’s predecessor Joseph Kabila.<\/p>\n He was also sentenced to three years in prison in absentia that year for real estate fraud – charges he said were politically motivated.<\/p>\n Katumbi was barred from returning to the country to take part in the last election in 2018, the results of which were widely contested.<\/p>\n He returned home in 2019 after his fraud conviction was overturned and prosecutors dropped their investigations into the mercenary accusations.<\/p>\n Katumbi’s pardoning was part of move by Tshisekedi to signal a new era of political openness. Other indicted politicians and hundreds of prisoners were also cleared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Congolese opposition leader Moise Katumbi has filed his candidacy to run for president in December polls during which President Felix Tshisekedi will seek re-election for a second term in office, his party said on Wednesday. Katumbi, a millionaire businessman and former governor of the copper-rich Katanga region, will also be competing against\u00a0Martin Fayulu\u00a0– who came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"Reuters","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","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_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,33],"tags":[1461,1529,1555],"class_list":["post-9403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-politics","tag-denis-mukwege","tag-martin-fayulu","tag-moise-katumbi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9403","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=9403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}