Decomcratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila has said he would leave office after the December 23 elections, but may seek re-election in the future.<\/p>\n
Kabila, 47, said he would remain in politics after the poll as \u201cthere is still a long journey ahead\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He became president of the resource-rich African state in 2001 following the killing of his father Laurent.<\/p>\n
His presidential mandate ended in 2016, but he has stayed in office as elections were repeatedly delayed.<\/p>\n
Dozens of opposition supporters have been killed in protests demanding that he step down and elections be held.<\/p>\n
The election commission finally set December 23 as the election date, saying it had not been possible to hold the poll earlier because of difficulties in registering voters in a country with poor infrastructure and conflict in the mostly lawless eastern region.<\/p>\n
DR Congo has not had a peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe intend to make the elections as close to perfection as they can possibly be,\u201d Kabila told Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cObservers who think that the elections will not be free and fair, I am yet to see those observers come and state where they think we are lacking.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Kabila is backing his former Interior Minister, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, in the election.<\/p>\n
The European Union imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on Shadary last year after accusing him of human rights violations, including cracking down on the opposition.<\/p>\n
The election is expected to be a tight contest between him, opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi and business tycoon Martin Fayulu Madidi.\u2014BBC<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Decomcratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila has said he would leave office after the December 23 elections, but may seek re-election in the future. Kabila, 47, said he would remain in politics after the poll as \u201cthere is still a long journey ahead\u201d. He became president of the resource-rich African state in 2001 following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":72338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72337","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\/72337","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=72337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72339,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72337\/revisions\/72339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}