Kinshasa – A draft law introduced in the Democratic Republic of Congo parliament on Thursday would tighten up the nationality rules for the head of state and rule out potential candidate Moise Katumbi.
“My proposition… aims to restrict access to the role of President of the Republic, which should be reserved exclusively for Congolese people born of a Congolese father and mother,” the bill’s initiator and former presidential candidate Noel Tshiani told AFP.
Tshiani believes that many senior roles, including prime minister, ministers, heads of police and army, should be held only by people whose parents were both Congolese.
But his draft bill targets the presidency, ahead of the next presidential election in December 2023.
Tshiani is close to current President Felix Tshisekedi. Both men are from the Kasai region.
He is a former World Bank official who stood for the presidency in 2018 but received less than 1% of the vote, as he had done in 2011.
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The draft bill was presented to parliament by MP Nsingi Mpululu of the Common Front for Congo (FCC) , which supports Tshisekedi’s predecessor and arch-rival Joseph Kabila.
Mpululu said the nationality measure had the support of 260 of the 500 parliamentary deputies.
Tshisekedi has already expressed his intention to stand for re-election in 2023.
Potential candidate Katumbi, a major political figure and former governor of Katanga in the southeast, denounced the draft law, his camp said.
“The UDPS (presidential party) and President Tshisekedi want to exclude potential presidential candidates by instrumentalising the law on nationality “, his chief of staff Olivier Kamitatu told AFP.
Accusing the draft law’s supporters of “preparing an election parody in order to install an autocratic regime”, Kamitatu said that submitting this bill to Parliament for debate would be “a red line not to be crossed” by Tshisekedi and his supporters, whom he accused of being behind the proposal.
An affluent business man and owner of the prestigious TP Mazembe football club, Katumbi has a Congolese mother and Greek father.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Getty Images
