Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso said today he wants a presidential election to be held several months early, after a new constitution removed age and term limits obstructing his bid to extend his rule.
Under the controversial new charter adopted after a referendum in October, an election was due to be held in the Republic of Congo next July, but he said he wanted to bring it forward to the first quarter of 2016 to usher in a "new dynamic" following the referendum.
"Speeding up Congo's march on the path of its development is a concern for all," he said, adding that he had instructed the interior ministry to draft legislation to bring the vote forward.
The former Marxist soldier, now 71, has so far not actually announced his intention to run for re-election.
He was president from 1979 to 1992, when Congo was a one-party state, and has since served two consecutive seven-year mandates.
The former French colony's constitutional court last month said a whopping 94 percent of voters had backed changing the constitution to scrap a 70-year age limit on presidential candidates and lift a ban on presidents serving more than two terms.
But critics dubbed the referendum a "constitutional coup", with the FROCAD opposition coalition slamming the vote as "neither free, nor just, nor fair, nor transparent".
And Congo was rocked by protests in the run-up to the vote, with at least four people killed in clashes between opposition demonstrators and security forces.
Opponents to the new constitution rallied under the cry "Sassoufit", a pun on the French expression "ca suffit" which means "that's enough".
