From the Republic of Congo The main candidate of the presidential opposition, Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas, died of coronavirus at the age of 60.
Kolelas died on Sunday in Covid-19 when he was being flown to France for treatment, said his campaign director on Monday, the day after the presidential election.
Kolelas was seen as the main rival of Denis Sassou Nguesso, 77, who was widely expected to win Sunday’s vote. On Saturday, Kolelas posted a video of his sickbed, declaring that he was “fighting death”.
“Stand up as a person … I am fighting on my deathbed, you are also fighting for your change,” he asked his supporters, saying the election was “about the future of their children”.
Kolelas came in second, behind Sassou Nguesso, in the previous elections in 2016, with a 15% increase, according to official results. He was the only serious candidate for president who left on Sunday after a series of boycotts, withdrawn candidacies and exclusions.
“Go and vote for the change, so I won’t have fought for anything,” Kolelas told supporters.
He dreamed of replacing the country’s former leader, Sassou Nguesso, who forced his father, Bernard Kolelas, to flee.
Nicknamed Pako, he was the fourth of 12 children. He studied economics in France and later taught at French universities. He entered politics late on the advice of his father, a former mayor of Brazzaville and a former prime minister who fled to Mali with his family in 1997, when Sassou Nguesso struggled to return to power.
“It was when we were in exile that my father asked me to continue the political struggle,” said Kolelas at a recent rally. “He just said that to me, not to the others, as we were 12 brothers and sisters.” He returned to Congo in 2005 for his mother’s funeral.
Two years later, the MCCI party founded by his father in 1990 signed an agreement with the PCT of Sassou Nguesso and, in 2009, young Kolelas joined the government as minister of fisheries, later becoming minister of public services.
But he distanced himself from Sassou Nguesso by opposing changes to the constitution that allowed the president to seek a new term. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Kolelas founded his own party, the Union of Democratic Humanists, or UDH-Yuki.
Kolelas was supported in 2016 by a former rebel chief, Frédéric Bintsamou, known as Pastor Ntumi, who, like him, is from the Pool region in southern Congo. After Bintsamou contested the results, Pool erupted in violence, which ended the following year.