DR Congo: Ex-Congo President, Pascal Lissouba passes away after an illness

Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS) spokesman and MP Honore Sayi has said that Ex-Congo President, Pascal Lissouba passed away after an illness, according to a news report by Nehanda Radio.

Former Congolese president Lissouba, who in 1992 won his country’s first multi-party presidential elections, died in France on August 24 at the age of 88.

Lissouba was president of the Republic of Congo also called Congo-Brazzaville, to distinguish it from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from 1992 to 1997.

He fled to France after being overthrown in a brief civil war by the current president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, who had lost the country’s first multi-party elections in 1992.

Born in Tsinguidi, in the southwest of the country, Lissouba studied agricultural engineering, gaining a doctorate in France in the late 1950s during the final years of colonial rule.

In the 1960s, he became minister of agriculture in the newly-independent country before serving as prime minister under the then president, Alphonse Massamba-Debat.

In 1991, Lissouba set up UPADS as international pressure pushed Sassou Nguesso, a French-trained paratrooper who came to power in 1979, to organize a multi-party vote.

But his historic victory the following year was marred by clashes that broke out in 1993 between armed groups of the country’s ruling and opposition parties that left around 2,000 dead.

In October 1997, Sassou Nguesso returned to power, ousting Lissouba with the support of Angolan troops after a five-month conflict that claimed between 4,000 and 10,000 lives.

In 2001, the High Court of Justice in Brazzaville sentenced Lissouba in absentia to 30 years’ forced labor on charges of treason and corruption.