Presidential elections were held in the Republic of the Congo on 12 July 2009. Long-time President Denis Sassou Nguesso won another seven-year term with a large majority of the vote, but the elections were marred by accusations of irregularities and fraud from the opposition; six opposition candidates chose to boycott the elections.
Background
In April 2009, a forum called Republican Dialogue was held to prepare for the election. A coalition of about 20 opposition parties called the United Front of Opposition Parties (FUPO) decided to boycott the forum. Pascal Tsaty-Mabiala, the Secretary-General of UPADS and spokesman for FUPO, condemned the preparations for the election, saying that "conditions such as transparency, the revision of lists, and respect for the opposition are not created for this election; it will be neither free nor transparent, and we will contest that."
Sassou Nguesso signed a decree on 8 May 2009 (which was announced on 11 May) setting the election date as 12 July 2009. The National Elections Organisation Committee (CONEL) oversaw the election; the opposition criticized it for allegedly favoring the government.
Candidates
Ange Edouard Poungui, who was Prime Minister from 1984 to 1989, was chosen as the candidate of the largest opposition party, the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS), while Mathias Dzon, who was Minister of Finance from 1997 to 2002, was chosen as the candidate of the Alliance for the Republic and Democracy (ARD), a coalition of opposition parties. The incumbent President, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Congolese Party of Labour (PCT), was widely expected to run; he eventually announced his candidacy at a rally in Brazzaville on 6 June 2009.
On 23 February 2009, the formation of an alliance between the PCT and the opposition Rally for Democracy and Development (RDD) was announced. The parties agreed to present a single candidate in the 2009 presidential election, and the RDD agreed to join the government if their joint candidate (presumed to be Denis Sassou Nguesso) won the election.
Ange Edouard Poungui was chosen as the UPADS candidate by the party's National Council in a primary election on 30 November 2008. His sole rival for the nomination, Joseph Kignoumbi Kia Mboungou (who was the UPADS candidate in the 2002 presidential election), withdrew from the vote, complaining of "lack of transparency in the process", and Poungui, as the only candidate, received about 85% of the vote.
A total of 17 candidates submitted applications to run, and the Constitutional Court approved 13 of them on 18 June. Four candidacies were rejected: those of Poungui, Marcel Guitoukoulou, Rigobert Ngouolali, on the grounds that they had failed to establish their continuous residency in Congo-Brazzaville for at least two years, and that of UPADS dissident Christophe Moukoueke, on the grounds that he exceeded the 70-year age limit for candidates. UPADS spokesman Jean-Claude Ivouloungou denounced the exclusion of Poungui's candidacy and claimed that it was politically motivated, arguing that "over the last two years, all the candidates moved around, to visit family abroad, to fine-tune their plans". By rejecting Poungui's candidacy, the Constitutional Court's decision removed a key opposition candidate from the election and left Matthias Dzon as the main opposition candidate.
Conduct
On 10 July, six candidates—Dzon, Guy Romain Kinfoussia, Clement Mierassa, Bonaventure Mizidy Bavoueza, Jean-Francois Tchibinda Kouangou, and Marion Matzimba Ehouango—called for the election to be delayed, claiming that the electoral lists were deeply flawed and included people who were not eligible to vote, as well as people who did not exist at all. At an opposition rally later on the same day, Dzon, Kinfoussia, Mierassa, and Bavoueza called for the people to boycott the election. Tchibinda Kouangou and Ehouango were not present at the rally, but Kinfoussia said that they also backed the call for a boycott. Dzon declared on the occasion that "for us, the election is not taking place on July 12 ... It will take place on the day the Congolese people are given a real choice."
Roger Bouka Owoko, the head of the Congolese Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH), criticized the electoral lists as "grotesque" on 11 July, saying that it was impossible that there could be so many people who were entitled to vote. Congo's population was estimated at about 3.6 million, and 2.2 million people were officially registered to vote; however, Bouka Owoko said that an extrapolation of statistics from other countries would predict only about 1.6 million registered voters in a population of 3.6 million.