Former Congolese Prime Minister Clément Mouamba Dies

By Rédaction 

Africa News

The former Congolese Prime Minister, Clément Mouamba, passed away aged 77 in the Saint Joseph Hospital in Paris, France, following a brief illness.

Clément Mouamba, born in 1944 in Sibiti in the department of Lékoumou, was a Congolese public official.

The former Prime Minister for Clément Mouamba's government resigned on 4th of May, just after Denis Sassou Nguesso was sworn in for a fourth presidential term.

Mouamba was born on 13 November 1943 in Sibiti. Under President Pascal Lissouba, he was Minister of Finance from September 1992 to June 1993. Mouamba was a leading member of the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS), which was the ruling party under Lissouba and went into opposition after Lissouba's ouster in the 1997 civil war.

Mouamba was one of several top officials who served under Lissouba to face corruption charges in connection with the misappropriation of funds from selling oil, far below market value, to Occidental Petroleum in 1993. However, on 27 December 2001 the charges against Mouamba and Claudine Munari were dismissed because they were just following orders. Lissouba and four other top officials—who were tried in absentia, as they had fled the country when Lissouba was ousted—were convicted and sentenced to decades of hard labour.

At the first extraordinary congress of UPADS, held on 27–28 December 2006, Mouamba was elected as one of the party's 25 vice-presidents.

Mouamba broke with his party in the period prior to the 2015 constitutional referendum, choosing to take part in a government-sponsored dialogue, which the opposition boycotted, on the question of changing the constitution.

Mouamba was designated as the candidate of the ruling Congolese Labour Party (PCT) in the town of Sibiti for the July 2017 parliamentary election, taking the place of Thierry Moungalla, the Minister of Communications.