Congo's Kabila, in power for 17 years, won't contest next election

Congo's President Joseph Kabila will not stand in the election scheduled for December, a spokesperson said, finally agreeing to obey a two-term limit but picking a hard-core loyalist under European Union sanctions to stand instead.

The announcement on Wednesday by spokesperson Lambert Mende that former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary would represent Kabila's ruling coalition in the Dec. 23 vote came just hours before the deadline to register candidates.

The announcement that Kabila will not run again for the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) will ease fears in the region and beyond that a Kabila candidacy would drag the country back into the civil wars of the turn of the century in which millions died, mostly from hunger and disease.

"What matters for the moment is that the constitution, whether willingly or not, has been respected," said Senator Jacques Ndjoli of the opposition Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC) party.

Opposition leaders fear the goodwill Kabila could earn from not seeking a new term could make it easier for his coalition to cheat and are concerned about electronic voting machines due to be used for the first time.

His supporters dismiss these concerns.

"Today, Kabila has shown that he is the father of democracy in Congo," Patrick Nkanga, a PPRD official, told Reuters by telephone.

Welcomed move

Kabila's second term ended in late 2016, but a new election was frequently postponed. He has been in power since days after his father, Laurent-Dsir, was assassinated while president in 2001.

The Dec. 23 vote should now herald Congo's first democratic transition of power following decades marked by authoritarian rule, coups and deadly conflict.

But U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, while welcoming Kabila's announcement, said in a statement on Wednesday that much more needed to be done to ensure a credible election in December.

Several opposition candidates, including former vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba for the MLC and the president of Congo's largest opposition party Flix Tshisekedi, have also registered to run.

Bemba recently returned to the country after being convicted, and then acquitted on appeal, of war crimes bythe International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

By the close of registration on Wednesday evening, more than two dozen candidates had filed papers to run in the election. The definitive list of candidates will be published on Sept. 19.

With files from CBC News