{"id":21556,"date":"2025-12-23T11:37:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T09:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/focus-on-the-opposition-candidates-in-cars-presidential-election\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:32:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:32:36","slug":"focus-on-the-opposition-candidates-in-cars-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/focus-on-the-opposition-candidates-in-cars-presidential-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus on the opposition candidates in CAR&#8217;s Presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>President Faustin-Archange Touadera will face six other candidates in a Presidential election to be held in Central African Republic (CAR) on December 28, after a court rejected attempts to bar his two main rivals.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Anicet-Georges Dologuele, 68, is a former Prime Minister and one of the incumbent&#8217;s two main rivals. He served as Prime Minister in 1999 and 2001 and ran against Touadera in elections in 2015 and 2020.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Dologuele was the runner up in the 2020 election, winning 21.6% of the vote. He alleged there were cases of election fraud, though a court upheld Touadera&#8217;s win.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This year Touadera&#8217;s supporters filed a complaint to bar Dologuele from running over allegations that he held French citizenship, which is not permitted for Presidential candidates under the constitution adopted in 2023.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Dologuele renounced his French citizenship this year and the Constitutional Court cleared his candidacy.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He is running without the support of the main opposition party, the Republican Bloc for the Defense of the Constitution (BRDC) of March 30, 2016.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The party has boycotted the election, which is also for the legislature and regional and municipal positions, over concerns that the vote will not be fair or transparent.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The other main challenger to Touadera, Henri-Marie Dondra, \u00a059, is another former Prime Minister, who served from 2021-2022.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The Constitutional Court cleared him to run in the election after Touadera accused him of holding Congolese citizenship, which he denied.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He started his professional career at the Banque Populaire Maroco-Centrafricaine and later spent 18 years mostly overseas at the Fonds Africain de Garantie et de Cooperation Economique, a financial institution that aims to finance bank loans for public and private sector investment.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He climbed the ranks there to become director general.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Dondra returned to Bangui in 2016 to serve as finance and budget minister under Touadera until 2021, when he became Prime Minister.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Marcelin Yalemende, 49, is an Evangelical Pastor running on a pledge to strengthen the rule of law, improve public services and fight corruption.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He has promised to restore the two-term limit on presidential rule after it was controversially scrapped in a 2023 referendum.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Serge Djorie, 49, is a Medical Doctor specialised in infectious and tropical diseases who has published research with France&#8217;s Institut Pasteur in Bangui.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Aristide Reboas is a former Director of Intelligence Services and Minister of Youth and Sport.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He ran in the 2020 presidential election, winning less than 1% of the vote.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Eddy Symphorien Kparekouti has made the fight against poverty his top issue in the campaign.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>A Civil Engineer, he participated in the drafting of the constitution adopted in 2023.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21557,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-21556","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"Central African Republic's Presidential elections","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25181,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21556\/revisions\/25181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=21556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}