AA / Pascal Mulegwa
Opposition parties in the Republic of Congo have rejected the authorities’ call to participate in a “political consultation”, initiated by the authorities before the legislative elections scheduled for 2022.
The Alliance for the Republic and Democracy (ARD), led by Mathias Dzon, announced in a press release in Brazzaville, its non-participation in political consultation, calling for the convening of a “genuine inclusive political dialogue”.
According to this opposition political platform, the government’s decision to convene the political consultation in Owando, in the Cuvette department, located in the northern part of the country, from March 3 to 6, 2022, was taken without prior consultation with the opposition.
“Until the current electoral governance is improved, we will no longer be able to participate in anything. The power has always rolled us in flour on the eve of each election”, underlined the spokesman of the ARD, Elo Dacy, who made public the declaration of the political group.
ARD thinks that the political class is invited to Owando to “endorse, in return for cold hard cash, the decisions taken unilaterally by the government, in the absence of opposition representatives”.
With the aim of promoting democratic elections, the ARD stressed the need to overhaul the electoral system through the “dissolution of the current Independent National Electoral Commission, the drafting of a new electoral law; the realization of agreement-parts of a special administrative census”.
It also calls for the introduction of biometrics in the voter identification process, the adoption of a law relating to a new electoral division and the real neutrality of the Constitutional Court”.
One of the significant demands of this coalition is the “abolition of early military voting”.
“The Congolese opposition must come together and demand that the authorities hold, in absolute urgency, a real inclusive political dialogue, the only and good solution to get the Congo out of the multidimensional crisis which is strangling it”, concludes the declaration.
From this Monday, the Congolese Minister of the Interior receives the political formations to prepare this consultation. Since 2009, the Congolese authorities have routinely organized consultations on the eve of the elections and the results. These initiatives are often contested by the opposition.
In this small, oil-rich economy, parliament is controlled by the Congolese Labor Party (PCT) of President Denis Sassou Nguesso, which has been in power for nearly 38 years.
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