Central African opposition leader gives up French passport to challenge president

________________

Former Central African Republic prime minister Anicet-Georges Dologuele has relinquished his French citizenship to allow him to run against President Faustin Touadera, the opposition politician told AFP on Monday.

Dologuele is set to once again challenge Touadera for leadership of the Russia-friendly country, among the world's poorest nations and plagued by instability for decades.

The economist by training came second to the president in the 2020 ballot, which was marred by unrest and accusations of voter fraud.

Touadera's critics accuse him of wishing to become the CAR's president for life, especially after a change of constitution in 2023 allowed him to seek a third term and barred candidates holding multiple citizenships from running against him.

Though the presidential vote's first round is scheduled for December 28, Dologuele questioned whether the authorities would manage to organise the vote "in good time".

Having insisted he took the "personal" decision to give up his French citizenship with a "heavy heart", the opposition leader also took aim at the national electoral authority's "incompetence and avowed bias".

Issues with the electoral roll and funding have long delayed the regional and municipal ballots scheduled to take place alongside the presidential vote's first round.

By the authority's count, some 2.3 million voters are expected at the ballot box, of whom 749,000 will have been enrolled for the first time.

Dologuele refused to rule out a boycott of the vote if the conditions for holding free and fair elections were not present.

"It's like a football match. A team who knows that the referees are biased won't take to the pitch," the opposition politician said.

Touadera's first election in 2016 came in the middle of a bloody civil war, which dragged on from 2013 to 2018.

That half-decade-long conflict was the latest crisis to grip the nation, which has endured a succession of coups, authoritarian rulers and civil wars since gaining independence from France in 1960.

In recent years the intervention of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, Rwandan troops and Russian mercenaries from the notorious Wagner paramilitary group has helped to improve the security situation.

Yet anti-government fighters are still at large on the country's main highways, as well as in the east near the borders with war-torn Sudan and South Sudan.