Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Senate has adopted a bill to change the constitution which could open the door to a \u200cthird term in office for President Felix Tshisekedi, days after a protest against the bill turned violent in the capital Kinshasa.<\/p>\n
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The bill paves the way for a referendum on a new constitution that \u2060would allow Tshisekedi, who is currently serving his second and final term, to serve a third term as if it were his first.<\/p>\n
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Eighty-nine senators took part in the vote on Monday and all voted in favour of adopting the bill. Twenty senators did not participate.<\/p>\n
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The bill must still be signed into law \u200cby \u2060Tshisekedi.<\/p>\n
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Opposition Senator Salomon Kalonda Della Idi said in a statement that the bill could “permanently Balkanize the country”.<\/p>\n
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Last week, a protest against the bill turned violent when security forces \u2060fired tear gas and live ammunition to disperse demonstrators who threw rocks, local residents told Reuters<\/em>, with opponent Delly Sesanga’s \u2060communication team claiming on X that he was shot in the leg.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n DRC’s National Assembly, the lower \u2060house of parliament, has already approved the bill.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n DRC\u2019s next presidential election is scheduled for 2028.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14571,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-37318","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"DRC Senate has adopted a bill to change the constitution","published_date":"2026-06-17 07:16:14","news_description":"DRC Senate has adopted a bill to change the constitution","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37318","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\/37318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37319,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37318\/revisions\/37319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=37318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}