While the campaign for the presidential election on March 21 closes this Friday in Congo-Brazzaville, an activist movement called “Progress” has since the beginning of the week campaigned against the purchase of conscience, as citizens have avoided voting with full responsibility during this election, for which outgoing President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who has accumulated 36 years in power, is seeking a fourth term.
as reported from Brazzaville, Loïcia Martial
In the makeshift market on the opposite side of the large and famous Total Market, a group of young people from the “Progress” movement were equipped with a megaphone slalom between the points of sale for the ladies offering used clothes. Each member wears a white T-shirt where we can read “My vote, my future, no to corruption, I vote for the bill”.
The movement is led by Charlin Kinouani, who trains merchants and passers-by who ask them to go and vote on Sunday with all their soul and conscience.
“It’s a habit in Congo: when it comes to the presidential election, people come to give 2,000 CFA francs or 5,000 CFA francs to the citizens so they can go and vote without being able to vote. “sacrificing their future. Now it’s a matter of telling them that their future means more than the 2,000 CFA francs they can take. What we ask the Congolese to go and vote in complete freedom.”
Congo Dia Nzokolo is also part of the campaign. For him, it is time to stop what he calls electoral corruption. “If there was money (in the country), why not give the Congolese the least, why just wait for the vote,” he says.
Convinced that fraud, embezzlement and corruption plague Congolese society, the young people of the “Progress” movement plan to continue their campaign even after the election.
While young people are leading this movement, Pierre Moussa, campaign director for Denis Sassou-Nguesso, presented his candidate at a press conference as “a wine that improves with age”. No other candidate worries him because he is the most experienced of all, he concluded.
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