Bernard Kolélas
Bernard Kolélas
1933–2009
○ Natural death
The opposition leader from Pool who ended one-party rule
On 7 November 1988 and 20 November 1989 he wrote to President Sassou Nguesso proposing a national round table on the country's problems.
A Congolese politician from Mboloki in Kinkala District, Pool, who founded the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI) and pressed for a multiparty system while the one-party state still stood. At the 1991 sovereign national conference he opened the parties' addresses and backed André Milongo's election as transitional prime minister, making him a key opposition figure of the democratic transition. He lost the 1992 presidential runoff to Lissouba and, appointed Lissouba's prime minister of national unity during the 1997 civil war, was ousted by Sassou Nguesso's loyalists and went into exile.
Career timeline
- 1989Founded the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI); party statutes filed with the Interior Ministry
- 1991Opened the parties' addresses at the sovereign national conference
- 1992Second in the first round of the presidential election (20.32%); lost the runoff to Lissouba
- 1994Elected mayor of Brazzaville
- 1997Appointed prime minister of national unity by Lissouba; ousted into exile when Sassou Nguesso's loyalists took Brazzaville
- 2000Sentenced to death in absentia by a Congolese court
- 2005Returned under amnesty, parliament adopted the amnesty law
- 2007Elected to the National Assembly