The government of Congo has revealed that the Central African country will be having its next legislative elections on July 10.
The announcement was made on Friday by a government spokesman, Thierry Moungalla, on state television Télé-Congo in a report on the Council of Ministers.
“The Council of Ministers has decided to convene the electorate for the first round of legislative elections and for local elections on July 4 for the vote of members of the public force, and on July 10 for the general vote,” said Moungalla,
Moungalla revealed that the dates were chosen “in view of the complexity and heaviness of the preparatory operations (…) to allow for their optimal execution”,
The date of the second legislative elections, which aim to renew the National Assembly, has not been set.
Congo’s veteran president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, was re-elected with 88.57 percent of the vote, in 2021. Sassou Nguesso, 77, has been in power for an accumulated 36 years, first taking the helm of the central African state in 1979.
Nguesso’s Congolese Labour Party (PCT) will be 79 years old in 2022 and almost 38 years old at the head of the country, is the leading party of the majority and has already invested its candidates. It has 92 deputies out of 151 in the outgoing Assembly.
The only opposition party with a parliamentary group in the lower house of parliament, the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS), intends to take part in the elections.