AA / Pascal Mulegwa
The Congolese authorities opened, on Thursday, political consultations without the major part of the opposition in Owando, capital of the Cuvette department, in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), to discuss electoral governance before the legislative elections scheduled for next July.
Nearly three hundred delegates from political parties and civil society are taking part in these three-day meetings opened by Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso, to discuss electoral governance and several other political and legal aspects.
“Dialogue is the keystone” to “build the country in peace and unity”, declared the head of government. The meetings, as routine since 2009, were convened by the Ministry of Territorial Administration, Decentralization and Local Development.
“Like democracy, improving the electoral process is a permanent quest,” added the Prime Minister, castigating the attitude of certain opposition political parties which boycotted the meeting.
The Minister of Territorial Administration, Decentralization and Local Development, Guy Georges Mbacka, warned that political consultation “is far from being an opportunity, as others say, to flour part of the opportunist political class and a part of the population with little awareness”.
Opposition political parties including the Alliance for the Republic and Democracy (ARD), led by Mathias Dzon, boycotted the political consultation, calling for the convening of a “genuine inclusive political dialogue”.
The ARD estimated last February that the political class invited to Owando will aim “to endorse, in return for hard cash, the decisions taken unilaterally by the authorities, in the absence of representatives of the opposition”.
The Congolese legislative elections will take place in July 2022 in order to renew the members of the National Assembly for five years.
In Congo, a small oil-rich economy, parliament is controlled by the Congolese Labor Party (PCT) of President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who has been in power for nearly 38 years.
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