The Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has said President Joseph Kabila will not seek a third mandate in the country\u2019s delayed elections because of constitutional term limits that prevent him from running again.<\/p>\n
Kabila, whose second term officially ended in 2016, is constitutionally ineligible for December\u2019s poll, although his rivals accuse him of wanting to stay in power.<\/p>\n
So far, he has not clearly stated whether he will step aside, despite appeals from the international community to publicly say he will not run for re-election.<\/p>\n
But DRC Prime Minister, Bruno Tshibala, said on Tuesday that Kabila will respect the constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe elections are going to take place without the participation of President Kabila, who will abide by the spirit and the letter of the constitution,\u201d he said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum of the Americas conference in Montreal, Canada.<\/p>\n
The country has seen widespread anger over what some see as Kabila\u2019s refusal to relinquish power after the end of his second full term in December 2016.<\/p>\n
Kabila came to power in 2001 after the assassination of his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, the country\u2019s third president.<\/p>\n
He was elected in 2006 in the DRC\u2019s first democratic election since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.<\/p>\n
Kabila secured a second term in 2011, though that election was plagued by allegations of widespread voter fraud.<\/p>\n
A DRC president can only serve two consecutive five-year terms.<\/p>\n
According to the DRC\u2019s Independent National Electoral Commission, the elections \u2013 which have been postponed twice \u2013 will take place on December 23 this year.<\/p>\n
Last week, exiled opposition leader Moise Katumbi addressed thousands of supporters in the capital, Kinshasa, via video link, and called for a united front against Kabila.\u2014 Al Jazeera<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has said President Joseph Kabila will not seek a third mandate in the country\u2019s delayed elections because of constitutional term limits that prevent him from running again. Kabila, whose second term officially ended in 2016, is constitutionally ineligible for December\u2019s poll, although his rivals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66830,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66827\/revisions\/66830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}