Former warlord returns to DR Congo from prison to run for president
CONGO - Huge crowds have lined the streets of the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to welcome home Jean-Pierre Bemba, the opposition leader whose war crimes convictions at the international criminal court (ICC) were quashed in June. Bemba’s arrival triggers an intense new phase of political manoeuvring and instability in the country, which is due to hold presidential elections in December. Candidates must be in the country to lodge their applications before a deadline in a week. Bemba is due to file his candidacy with the electoral commission today. The 55-year-old left DRC in 2007 and spent 10 years in prison in The Hague before his surprise acquittal on appeal in June. The former warlord’s return will mobilise opposition to President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power since the assassination of his father in 2001. “En route to the land of my ancestors, my homeland,” Bemba said on Twitter during the night. Thousands of supporters of the former rebel leader and vice-president thronged the streets of the capital, Kinshasa, to greet him. Police fired teargas at opposition supporters in the Limete neighbourhood as Bemba’s convoy approached, and witnesses said officers also fired teargas to clear the road near N’djili airport. “In Bemba, we have a new hope and a new beginning,” said Eva Baizaba, the secretary general of Bemba’s MLC party, who met him off the plane along with about 300 other party members. “The Congolese people have waited for this moment for a long time,” said Toussaint Bodongo, another party member. “Bemba will maybe bring the solution that we need to Congo.” Kabila, whose second term expired in 2016, has repeatedly postponed elections. He is barred from a third term by the constitution and his close associates have denied that he hopes to find a way to stand again. But the president was recently nominated as a candidate by his party’s youth league, and no one else appears to have been promoted as a possible replacement within the ruling coalition. Bemba has a powerful support base in DRC and experts described his return as “a huge wildcard”. “On his own, as an opposition leader, he could do extremely well,” Stephanie Wolters, an analyst based in South Africa told the Guardian when news of Bemba’s acquittal at the ICC was announced. “He is seen as a victim of Joseph Kabila’s politics and of international politics. If the opposition unite it would be very hard to see a Kabila victory that was anything but stolen.” (The Guardian)