Bemba throws hat in ring for DRC election in December
Former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Democratic Republic of Congo said on Wednesday he was headed for Kinshasa to throw his hat into the ring for a December presidential election after spending 11 years abroad – most of them behind bars.
“En route to the land of my ancestors, my homeland,” he tweeted during the night.
A photo of the 55-year-old boarding a private jet in Belgium accompanied the tweet.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in June overturned a 2016 conviction against Bemba for five counts of war crimes committed by his militia in the Central African Republic in 2002-03.
Bemba had vowed to return to Kinshasa to file his election bid, as candidates must physically be in the country to lodge their applications.
On Monday, the governor of Kinshasa said he would ensure security and ordered 10 policemen to guard Bemba after his arrival.
A hefty police contingent was deployed on Wednesday – a holiday in the DRC – on Kinshasa’s main arteries and around the headquarters of Bemba’s party, the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC).
The ICC overturned on appeal an initial 18-year term for war crimes and crimes against humanity for Bemba, who has spent a decade behind bars.
Now a senator, Bemba has been in Belgium – the DRC’s former colonial power – since the ICC acquittal.
The DRC is in the grip of a crisis over the future of President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the country since 2001 and has remained in office – despite a two-term limit that expired in December 2016 – under a constitutional clause that enables a president to stay in office until a successor is elected. Kabila, who defeated Bemba in the 2006 election, has refused to say if he will seek a new term in office in the crucial December 23 election.