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Security forces in the Republic of the Congo cast their votes on Wednesday before presidential elections in which veteran leader Denis Sassou Nguesso is the favorite.
An electoral college was opened in the southern city of Dolisie, they saw AFP journalists, where 1,203 soldiers, policemen and gendarmes were scheduled to vote, a civic duty in this country.
Also called Congo-Brazzaville, the republic is a neighbor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rich in oil but also affected by poverty.
Sassou Nguesso, who is running for a fourth term, is a 77-year-old retired general who first ruled from 1979 to 1992 before returning at the end of a civil war in 1997.
Henri Bouka, president of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), said that between 55,000 and 60,000 votes were cast across the country.
“This early voting by the security forces is a test that we are testing. Other African countries are already doing it,” Bouka told AFP.
Opposition groups have criticized the decision to separate the vote of the security forces from the general public, seeing this as an additional risk of electoral fraud.
The influential Catholic Church of the Congo, which has expressed “serious reservations” about how transparent and credible the vote will be, asked that its election observers receive accreditation.
But the authority in charge of accreditation said that “it was not possible … to give a positive response” to the request.
In 2015, the country organized a referendum to remove the 70-year age limit and a ban on presidents serving more than two terms.
The move paved the way for Sassou Nguesso to secure a third term in the March 2016 elections that were marred by bloodshed.
His rivals, former general Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko and former minister Andre Okombi Salissa, questioned the results.
They were arrested, brought to trial, and each sentenced to 20 years in prison for violating state security.
Sassou Nguesso faces seven rivals on Sunday, including Mathias Dzon, a 73-year-old former finance minister who was runner-up in 2016.
The largest opposition group, the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS), has already said it will boycott the vote.
Another important figure, Frederic Bintsamou, a former rebel chief who took up arms against Sassou Nguesso after the 2016 vote, has called for a peaceful vote.
Bintsamou, also called Pastor Ntumi, told reporters that his party, the National Council of Republicans (CNR), would not run or support any candidate.
The elections “should not be the occasion to stir up the old demons of the division,” Bintsamou told reporters on Saturday.
Just over 2.5 million people are registered to vote out of an estimated population of five million.
‘Masquerade’
One of the most respected writers in the Congo, Emmanuel Dongala, who lives in the United States, has criticized the fairness and transparency of the vote.
“It will not be an election, but a masquerade,” said Dongala, a chemist by training whose novels include “Johnny Mad Dog,” about children recruited into the Liberian civil war.
“Everyone already knows the name of the winner: Denis Sassou Nguesso,” he told AFP.
“I bet there will be victory in the first round, with a score of between 60 and 70 percent.”
Mambou Aimee Ngali, a playwright who was Minister of Culture between 1997 and 2002 before joining the opposition, said: “I don’t expect anything from the March 21 elections.”
“I think he (Sassou Nguesso) is tired, he should retire,” he told AFP.