Bernard Kolélas

Bernard Bakana Kolélas (born June 12, 1933 in Mboloki , Kinkala , Pool (Congo) , † November 12, 2009 in Paris ) was a politician of the Republic of the Congo .

biography

In 1960 he was appointed Secretary General in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by President Fulbert Youlou . When Youlou was overthrown on August 15, 1963, he turned down the offer of the new President Alphonse Massemba-Débat to take over the office of foreign minister in favor of David Charles Ganao. After his arrest in February 1964 and his subsequent release at the request of Prime Minister Pascal Lissouba , he went into exile in Zaire , where he founded the newspaper "La Résistance" in Kinshasa .

Kolélas, a Protestant Christian and staunch anti-communist , was arrested and tortured several times for his religious and political beliefs. Like Lissouba, who like him came from the south of the Republic of the Congo, he was in prison at the end of the 1970s . After President Denis Sassou-Nguesso took office in 1979, he was initially released from prison, but later imprisoned again for four years and then went into exile .

As leader of the anti-communist opposition , he was a presidential candidate for the Mouvement Congolais pour la démocratie et le développement intégral (MCDDI) in 1992 and, as such, was defeated by Pascal Lissouba in the runoff election with 38.68 percent to 61.32 percent of the vote. After Lissouba's inauguration as president, clashes broke out between his militia troops and the loyal troops of Lissouba's in 1993 and 1994 . In 1994 he was elected mayor of the capital Brazzaville .

For July 1997, he intended to run again in the presidential election. After skirmishes between Lissouba's troops and Sassou-Nguesso's units had already broken out in June 1997, he tried to mediate between the warring camps in order to achieve a peaceful agreement. On September 12, 1997, he accepted the offer to take over the post of prime minister under this , and in his government of national unity also offered the supporters of Sassou-Nguesso ministerial positions, which was rejected by Sassou-Nguesso.

After the victory of the troops of Sassou-Nguesso over the soldiers of Lissouba and the militia Koléla allied with them on October 12, 1997, he lost his office as prime minister. He then went into exile again and lived first in the Ivory Coast and then since December 2003 in Mali . He was sentenced to death in absentia on May 4, 2000 for several crimes during the civil war, including torture and rape of prisoners . After several attempts to return failed, he was finally allowed to return on October 14, 2005 after the Congolese authorities had allowed him to enter the country because of his wife's funeral. President Sassou-Nguesso then decided to initiate an amnesty on humanitarian grounds, whereupon Parliament approved an amnesty law on December 6, 2005, under which his death sentence was overturned.

In the elections to the National Assembly in 2007 he was finally elected MP, where he represented the constituency of Goma Tsé-Tsé .

Web links

• rulers.org
• Afrique en Ligne: "Congo's ex-PM Bernard Kolelas dies in Paris"
• BBC: Congo Ninja leader dies, aged 76

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "L'Homme politique: Bernard Kolélas dans les crises congolais" ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.