The coronavirus as an electoral factor | The leader op …

The coronavirus has just put its tail in the elections of the Republic of Congo, the former French colony on the Atlantic coast of Africa which voted this Sunday. On the same day, while his compatriots were looking for the ballot box, opposition leader Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas died while on his way to France. The whole episode is frankly strange, because Kolelas died in an ambulance plane which took him to Paris for treatment and which landed with a corpse, an event which the French public prosecutor in Bobigny is investigating. But what is clear is that the eternal president of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, will have a smooth transition this time around. In fact, no one has enough power to report and question the fraud they commit every seven years.

Congo-Brazzaville, as it is sometimes called to distinguish it from its huge neighbor which was a Belgian colony, was part of French Equatorial Africa until 1960. The early experience of independence was not the worst, even if it has not been stable, with a couple of military coup attempts – one stopped by Cuban troops – and a turn to Marxism in 1969. Appears the figure of the unsinkable Sassou, who in 1979 was at the head of the government and began an increasingly hard authoritarian drift, which it ended with the fall of the Soviet Union. Sassou calls elections in 1992, loses them and surprises everyone by accepting the result. Under President Pascal Lissouba, the Congo takes the path of neoliberalism, accepting the prescriptions of the Monetary Fund and a loan, for them huge, of one hundred million dollars.

In 1997, there was a short and bloody civil war between Lissouba and Sassou which in four months demolished much of the capital and caused tens of thousands of deaths. Neighboring Angola invades, ends the war and installs Sassou in power, who ruled de facto until 2002. Then he calls for presidential elections and a referendum to change the constitution which gives the president more powers and a seven-year term. Win 90%, before the unanimous repudiation of all international observers present. History repeats itself quickly in 2009 and again in 2016, with the addition of yet another constitutional reform so that the president can be elected as many times as he wants. The only concession is that the term of government has been reduced to five years.

In that election, Sassou faced for the first time a leader who had the slightest chance of eclipsing him, but possibly not winning the election. Kolelas, 61, embodied opposition and weariness in the face of presidential eternity. The Congolese economy weakened due to the fall in the price of oil, its almost only export, and Sassou made an adjustment worthy of the IMF: the education budget fell to 1991 levels and the budget of the health is the shadow of another time, despite the pandemic.

Kolelas’ latest political act was a video he recorded on Saturday, hours before the election. The leader takes off his mask, looks at the camera and explains to his supporters that he “fought against death”. And he calls on them to “stand up, vote for change, so I didn’t fight for nothing. Stand up as one man. You are fighting too, your children’s future is at stake.”

Sunday’s elections were peaceful, although even the Catholic Church was not allowed to deploy observers. As often happens, the results will take several days, a ritual that is accompanied by the “ballot boxes” of state television that pave the way for the massive triumph of the ruling party. In other elections, especially those of 2016, there have been strong popular protests against obvious electoral fraud, but with Kolelas’ death, it is not clear whether they will be repeated this year.