🇬🇧 Politicians throw weight behind presidential candidates

Political leaders in the Republic of Congo have started lining up behind candidates they intend to support ahead of the presidential elections later this month.

Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas has received the backing of an activist while a former opposition member and a minister have lined up behind Denis Sassou Nguesso. 

Andrea Ngombet, behind the infamous Sassoufit movement, announced on Thursday through his social platforms that he will vote for veteran politician Kolelas.

“With Parfait Kolelas, we agree on the urgent need for a rebalancing of our country’s foreign policy, particularly vis-a-vis the People’s Republic of China. Like me, Parfait Kolelas is firmly committed to the release of political prisoners,” noted the activist.

The leader of the political movement “Incarner l’Espoir” [Embodying Hope] who currently resides in France was quick to note that the Congolese diaspora are exempted from the voting exercise. He however called on the congolese present in the country to exercise their right.

“Not going to vote is to choose to stand still, it is to facilitate through a credulous passivity the renewal of the worst,” Ngombet noted.

Meanwhile, minister of technical and vocational education Nicéphore Fylla Saint Eudes, who is also the president of the Republican and Liberal Party (PRL) poured his support to incumbent leader Sassou Nguesso. According to him, the 77 year old leader embodies national unity and consolidates peace and stability.

“I ask you all to follow what I am doing, if we want the projects selected for the benefit of Linzolo, from which I also draw my origins, to be realized,” he said during his visit to Linzolo, a town in the pool department earlier in the week. 

Another political player who has thrown his weight on the incumbent is René Serge Blanchard Oba who recently came out of opposition and joined the presidential majority for the umpteenth time. 

The president of political party Movement for Solidarity and Development (MSD) said he will fully support the candidacy of the outgoing president, a move backed by his party members. Oba acknowledged that in the past he did not see eye to eye with Sassou Nguesso on certain issues stating that he was wrong. He also noted that no other presidential candidate qualifies to rule Congo like Sassou Nguesso.