On 15 March 2026, the Republic of Congo (RC) will hold the first round of its scheduled presidential election. The incumbent, 82-year old Denis Sassou Nguesso (PCT, centre-left), has announced his intention to run for another term. The election is less a genuine contest between competing candidates and ideas, but rather an orchestrated management of the country’s autocratic political system. With a V-dem rating of 0.25 currently, the RC straddles the line between what V-dem considers to be an “electoral” versus “closed” autocracy. As such, the election scheduled for March is very unlikely to be fully free or fair.
Background:
Nguesso has occupied the post of President since 1997; however, he previously had a 13-year-long presidency between 1979 and 1993. Shortly thereafter, mounting pressure from labor unions forced him to hold multiparty elections, ending the period of Marxist-Leninist dominance of the RC’s political and ideological life. After losing power in the 1993 election, two civil wars broke out in quick succession. It was during the conduct of the second civil war in 1997 that Nguesso returned to power after ousting his successor.
In 2015, Nguesso’s government introduced a new constitutional referendum over whether to adopt a new constitution that would reset term limits for Nguesso. Amid an opposition boycott, the constitution was passed overwhelmingly in a vote that was criticized for being neither free nor fair.
Political system
Formally, the country’s government aligns with the semi-presidential model common to France and many former French colonies in Africa. In reality, Nguesso’s power is centralized around him personally. Both the presidential and parliamentary elections use the standard two-round system.
Nguesso’s government has been marred by allegations of torture, the arrest of opposition figures, and the 2016 bombings by the government in the Pool region of southern Brazzaville in the aftermath of that year’s presidential election.
Nguesso dominates the country’s formal institutions. Together with the military, in which Nguesso was a former general, the PCT is the main vehicle for coordinating and managing the elites at various levels of government.
The election
The absence of viable competitors contributes to the lack of meaningful competition. Historically, there have been only three major parties that have posed any sort of challenge to Nguesso, according to the official vote share received by Nguesso or the PCT since Nguesso returned to office in 1997. These are UPADS (centre-left), UDH-Yuki (liberal|centre-right), and MCDDI (liberal). Ngeusso’s worst electoral performance came in 2016 when he secured 60.2% of the vote against the two main candidates, Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas of the MCDDI and Jean-Marie Mokoko, an independent, with roughly 15% and 13.7% of the vote, respectively. As of the last parliamentary elections, only UPADS and UDH-Yuki of the three have the largest number of seats for an opposition party in the parliament, with 7 seats each.
While there are currently six candidates cleared to run in this election, the three major parties that had previously fielded candidates in previous elections have all elected not to participate, according to the final candidate list. This non-participation effectively voids any sense of competitiveness in the upcoming election. Of the candidates that also stood in 2021, all besides Nguesso had failed to win more than 1% of the vote individually.
Implications
Together, these suggest that the election will be far from competitive. However, these elections are meaningful due to Ngeusso’s advanced age, having turned eighty-two last November. Many observers had speculated that Nguesso was grooming his son, Denis-Christel, to take over the reins of government from him.
In the event of Nguesso’s death, incapacitation, or even retirement, there is a non-zero chance that the political elite of the country could start to fragment. Though in theory, a succession could create openings for the opposition, in reality, the opposition is too fragmented. Like many of its neighbors, namely the Central African Republic, the party system, aside from Nguesso’s own PCT party and the opposition UPADS, remains weak and often highly personalized. Such parties typically fade into obscurity without their individual founders. This fragility has often made past election boycotts challenging in the past, even as it seems a new boycott could be taking shape for the presidential vote.
Conclusion
While a victory is all but assured for Nguesso due to the nature of the election, how the opposition responds will be indicative of the future of the country once Nguesso eventually leaves office. The succession question is more consequential than the outcome of the upcoming election.