Postponing DR Congo poll to 2018 will not solve crisis: France

Author: app/afp

PARIS: French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Tuesday that plans to postpone presidential elections in the troubled Democratic Republic of Congo until April 2018 were “no response to the crisis”.

President Joseph Kabila’s mandate is due to end in December and political tensions already run high in the vast country. Postponement of the vote was announced on Monday during a national dialogue in Kinshasa, boycotted by key opposition parties.

“To put off the election until 2018 will not solve the problem,” Ayrault told journalists in Paris. “There is only one way out of the crisis, for the president to announce that he will not run for office and for a date to be set for the election.”

“The situation in the DRC greatly concerns us. There is a major risk of clashes and bloody demonstrations and repression,” Ayrault said, weeks after dozens died and were injured during protests and a crackdown in Kinshasa.

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