Years surprise. At the end of the first round of the presidential election organized on Sunday March 21, outgoing President Denis Sassou Nguesso was reelected for a fourth consecutive term at the head of the Congo with 88.57% of the vote according to the official provisional results of the Electoral Commission, announced by the Minister of the Interior on Tuesday 23 March. Despite the announcement of the death of the main opponent Guy-Brice Parfait Kolélas on voting day, the authorities in charge of the election continued their work.
Un coup, KO
Denis Sassou Nguesso, 77, including 36 in power, is well ahead of his late rival and president of the Union of Humanist Democrats (UDH-Yuki) party, who came second with 7.84% of the vote, according to these same results which can make the subject of an appeal to the Constitutional Court. The former parachutist colonel – who came to power in 1979, then defeated by Pascal Lissouba in 1992 after rare pluralist elections in Central Africa before returning in 1997 at the cost of a civil war – obtains between 90 and 100% of votes in many polling centers, according to provisional results presented yesterday.
Only the other opposition candidate, ex-minister Mathias Dzon, who won 1.90% of the vote, announced an appeal to the Constitutional Court for the cancellation of the first round, which he has deemed “calamitous”. Participation was 67.55%.
With this overwhelming victory, DSN will still be able to seek a new mandate in 2026, according to the constitutional revision that it had adopted in 2015. “It is in a climate of peace that the electoral campaign took place. I believe that this is a good sign for our democracy ”, Denis Sassou Nguesso had welcomed, after having voted in Brazzaville. “I hope that the process will continue like this until its end. ”
Tomorrow that promises to be difficult
Since then, Sassou-Nguesso had been re-elected in the first round of the 2016 presidential election with 60% of the vote, ahead of Kolélas (15%), according to fiercely contested results. The death of Kolélas leaves the opposition even more weakened. Two other opponents, candidates in 2016, General Jean Marie Michel Mokoko and André Okombi Salissa, are serving a 20-year prison sentence for “endangering state security”. The main opposition party, the Pan African Union for Social Democracy (UDAPS), boycotted the 2021 election.
As a reminder, Internet connections were cut on Sunday, shortly before the start of the poll. The 55,000 to 60,000 members of the security forces voted early Thursday, fueling suspicions of fraud in the opposition. Without incident, and without passion either, the campaign will have been marked by the omnipresence of President Sassou, who has placed at the top of his priorities peace, youth, and the development of agriculture to get out of all-oil and dependence on imports.
“Why such a Stalinist result? “, Asked AFP a government official on Tuesday morning, on condition of anonymity. The priority of the outgoing president will now be to reconnect with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In crisis, Congo-Brazzaville is indebted to China and oil traders Glencore and Trafigura. The country must relaunch the agreement concluded in July 2019 with the IMF with the support of France. This agreement provided for the payment of 448.6 million dollars in several installments to Congo-Brazzaville. Only one installment was paid, due to Brazzaville’s debt to oil traders, who lent the regime funds repayable in barrels of oil.
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