Leading Congolese politician Moise Katumbi announced Friday his candidacy for the 2023 presidential elections as a popular salvation option against the current president, Felix Tshisekedi.
Katumbi has kept a scrupulous silence since his return to the country in 2019, after more than three years of exile in Europe, after precisely the government of the current president overturned a conviction against him for corruption.
Now, the former governor of Katanga hopes to consolidate his candidacy by acclamation at the general congress that his party will hold next December 19, in what is his definitive divorce with Tshisekedi, with whom he practically broke relations last year after denouncing irregularities of the Electoral Commission of the country.
In an interview with Radio France Internationale and France24, Katumbi has announced that he is saying goodbye to the «Sacred Union», the coalition led by the Congolese president, to present a candidacy as leader of the Together for the Republic party.
«I am a candidate because the situation in Congo is chaotic and because I have to save a people in danger,» Katumbi has declared amid the diplomatic conflict between Congo and Rwanda, a precarious ceasefire between military and rebels and North Kivu, and rampant violence in other parts of the country.
About a quarter of the population, or 26.4 million people, could be in need of humanitarian aid by 2023 as the numerous crises rocking the African country deepen, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned earlier this month.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
