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The campaign for Congo Brazzaville’s presidential elections, scheduled for March, has begun, as the country’s 82-year-old President, Denis Sassou Nguesso, who has held power for decades, hopes to extend his rule.
Nguesso, who first ruled the country between 1979 and 1992, before losing the country’s first multi-party elections to former prime minister Pascal Lissouba, announced in early February that he would seek another five-year term.
The campaigns, which began on Saturday morning with a rally held by the president’s Congolese Labour Party (PCT) on the Atlantic coast in the country’s economic and oil capital, Pointe-Noire, will end on March 13. The election is scheduled for March 15.
Six candidates are contesting the country’s 82-year-old president. Among the opposition is a first-time contestant, 34-year-old Destin Gavin, running under the Republican Movement (MR) platform.
Nguesso is Africa’s third-longest-ruling president, after Paul Biya of Cameroon, who has been in power since 1982, and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took power in a 1979 coup.
Prior to 2015, when a constitutional referendum amended some of the country’s provisions for presidential elections, the President’s term was seven years, renewable once, and limited to up to two terms.
But the constitutional referendum removed the age limit on presidential candidates, reduced the seven-year term to five years and increased the maximum number of terms from two to three. To win the election, a candidate must win an absolute majority (more than 50%) of votes. If no one does in the first round, there is a second round between the top two candidates.
