calm reigns in front of Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas’ home, in Bacongo Mpissa, a district south of Brazzaville. Since the funeral vigil organized on Monday after the announcement of his death, relatives, supporters, sometimes politicians continue to come in to offer their condolences. Sitting under the barnums arranged along the dirt street, they are grouped together in a solemn atmosphere. But, outside this perimeter, his sudden death, which occurred shortly after his evacuation to Paris during the first round of the presidential election this Sunday, March 21, continues to make headlines.
What did “Pako” die of?
“Corona”? Poisoning? The head of the Union of Humanist Democrats (UDH-Yuki), main opponent in the ballot box of outgoing President Denis Sassou Nguesso (declared the winner with 88.6% of the vote), had certainly been diagnosed positive for Covid-19 at the end of last week. But many Congolese do not believe it. “There is no corona here,” they repeat. According to the John Hopkins University database, the country has recorded 9,681 cases and 135 deaths since the onset of the pandemic, for more than 5 million people.
This Wednesday, the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office reported on the investigation that it had automatically opened following the observed death, he said, “at 1:40 am, while the plane transporting him from Brazzaville had landed at 1:35 am at Paris-Le Bourget airport ”this Monday, March 22. “The autopsy carried out on March 23, 2021 concluded in cardio-respiratory failure due to severe bilateral diffuse pneumonia compatible with the Congolese medical finding of Covid-19, contamination with the Sars-Cov-2 virus being confirmed by molecular virology” , mentions the press release sent to Point Afrique. A document also widely shared on Twitter and Facebook.
A controversy that says a lot about a climate of suspicion and mistrust
However, the version of death “compatible” with the Covid-19 contamination still does not convince. For a large part of the opinion, Parfait Kolelas would indeed have been poisoned. The thesis of polonium poisoning has even spread on social networks, carrying a number of infoxes. This highly toxic radioactive substance was used in particular to eliminate the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. A runaway that says a lot both about the vulnerability of opponents in the Congo, but also about the muffled mistrust of France, deemed too complacent towards Denis Sassou Nguesso (thirty-six years of cumulative exercise of power ) in the name of its economic interests. The Total group, for example, present since 1968 in the Republic of Congo (it merged in 2000 with Elf-Aquitaine), controls 60% of the production of hydrocarbons, according to the 2018 report of the Initiative for transparency in the extractive industries. . In short, supporting the version of death due to Covid-19 would amount to playing into the hands of power and its supposed French ally.
The Kolelas family in wait
This Thursday, the family of Parfait Kolelas in turn published a statement following the conclusions of the French justice supported by the report of the forensic institute of Paris. The tone is both reserved and measured. “The widow Kolelas and the Kolelas family claim that they have not received any conclusions regarding the ongoing autopsy at the forensic institute. An official communication will take place once the results are known. Therefore, we call for respect and dignity for the memory of our late brother Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas ”, they mention. Anxious not to comment on the causes of the death of his candidate, the campaign director of the UDH-Yuki, Christian Cyr Rodrigue Mayanda, recalls that “Kolelas had already been the subject of an attempted poisoning l ‘last year. He said that the President of the Republic no longer wanted to see him, and attempts to eliminate him were taken very seriously ”. During the proclamation of the provisional results of the presidential election on Tuesday evening, almost two days after the announcement of the death of Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, President Sassou Nguesso was out of his silence. “Beyond our political and perhaps even ideological differences, the loss of this son moves me deeply,” he declared.
The disputed presidential results
In addition, the UDH-Yuki rejected the official provisional results. “Our nascent democracy has been put to the test again by the old demons of the one-party system of the 1970s and 1980s,” said National Youth President Dedja Licrece Nguedi. After the 2016 electoral hold-up, many of us, the Congolese people, believed that the ridicule that the Congo is showing today in the concert of nations in electoral matters should be eradicated. But alas (…) fraud was once again at the rendezvous. (…) The political bureau of the UDH-Yuki energetically rejects these results as a whole and invites the Constitutional Court to do the same by saying the law, nothing but the law. As explained this Tuesday at Africa Point Jean-Jacques Serge Yombi-Opango and Justin Nzoloufoua, respectively political ally and communication director of Parfait Kolelas, the UDH-Yuki had established an appeal to the Constitutional Court to cancel the ballot due to the impediment of a candidate. But, the next day, the institution would have informed them that the file had to be submitted by the candidate (deceased) in person.
An appeal from Mathias Dzon announced
The former Minister of Finance Mathias Dzon, also in the running in this presidential election on behalf of the Alliance for the Republic and Democracy, and credited with 1.9% of the vote (3e position), also announced that he was filing an appeal. The case will be filed “shortly” at the Constitutional Court, he told Point Afrique. “The president falsified everything. He who cannot exceed 5% of the vote claims 88%. Our appeal is based on the numerous irregularities observed, such as the fact of having driven from the polling stations at 3 pm delegates of candidates who were supposed to monitor the vote and the counting; on the proclamation of the results in haste when all the minutes across the territory could not be collected, which leads us to say that it was prefabricated results that were proclaimed; on the death of candidate Parfait Kolelas who was prevented from carrying out his electoral campaign as early as last Thursday when he was hospitalized. This is a definitive impediment, ”he sums up.
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