Opposition leaders in Congo on Tuesday called a “civil disobedience” campaign to pressure the government into retracting a planned constitutional amendment that will enable the president to extend his three-decade rule.
Early Tuesday, the government announced that a landslide 92.96% of people voting in a controversial referendum on Sunday had approved changes to the constitution allowing President Denis Sassou Nguesso to run for a third term next year.
The FROCAD opposition coalition in a statement read to the media rejected the results as null and void and demanded “purely and simply the withdrawal” of the plan, as well as the release of opposition leaders held under house arrest.
Congo was rocked by protests in the run-up to the referendum to amend the 2002 constitution.
“We will maintain civil disobedience until the withdrawal of the planned constitution, which is a masquerade,” said FROCAD spokesperson Guy-Romain Kinfoussia.
The government also said turnout stood at 72.44% despite opposition calls for a boycott, and that the amendments had been enacted.
“The draft text of the new constitution has been adopted and will come into force as soon as it is put into effect by the President of the Republic,” Interior Minister Raymond Mboulou said.
The referendum proposed two amendments to the constitution, scrapping a 70-year presidential age ceiling as well as a two-term limit. Sassou Nguesso is 71 and has served two consecutive seven-year terms.
The veteran leader took power in 1979 and has been in office since then, bar five years, meaning he has ruled the central African country of 4.5 million people for more than 31 years.
The opposition had dubbed the referendum “a constitutional coup”, and the FROCAD coalition said “the vote was neither free, nor just, nor fair, nor transparent.”
“It was a mockery of a vote held under a state of siege,” the group said, referring to a ban on public rallies ahead of the vote and to deadly unrest last week.
According to AFP journalists in the capital Brazzaville, the second city Pointe-Noire, and in several other areas, voters largely stayed away from polling stations on Sunday.
On Monday, FROCAD leader Pascal Tsaty Mabiala estimated turnout at around 10 percent.
FROCAD, which stands for the Republican Front for the Respect of Constitutional Order and Democracy, is mainly made up of longtime Sassou Nguesso opponents.
