Congo: Investigation opened in France into the death of Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas

An investigation is opened in France to understand the causes of the death of the Congolese opponent Guy-Brice Parfait Kolélas.

While the news of the death of Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas, the main challenger of the Congolese President, Denis Sassou N’Guesso, in the presidential election on Sunday continues to surprise and sadden his supporters in Congo, the opening of a criminal investigation into the causes of this sudden death was announced by the prosecutor’s office in Bobigny in France. This is a normal procedure whenever there is the slightest suspicion about the reasons for the death. For the moment, the body of the opponent is still in France.

Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas, who came second in the 2016 presidential elections, was Denis Sassou N’Guesso’s most serious rival in Sunday’s elections. Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas came to politics on the advice of his father, Bernard Kolélas, former mayor of Brazzaville and former Prime Minister under Pascal Lissouba, according to his words, Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas held, between 2008 and 2015, ministerial positions under the Presidency of Denis Sassou N’Guesso, before distancing himself from the latter. In 2015, while he was a minister, he fiercely opposed Denis Sassou N’Guesso’s desire to amend the Constitution in order to stand for re-election the following year. Despite this opposition, the constitutional reform took place and Sassou N’Guesso was elected in the first round, with more than 60% of the votes, far ahead of his former minister.

As the campaign for the 2021 presidential election drew to a close, the man affectionately known to his supporters as ‘Pako’ began to experience symptoms that he took to be signs of malaria. Feeling weakened, he was hospitalised in a clinic in Brazzaville before the Covid-19 test came back positive last Friday afternoon. Evacuated to France in a medical plane on Sunday, he died five minutes after landing at Le Bourget, near Paris.

A troubling death, which occurred quite quickly for a sixty-one year old man, who tested positive for the Coronavirus on Friday, was still lucid the next day, Saturday, and was able to deliver a message to his supporters on his hospital bed. This is enough to make one wonder what could have struck down Denis Sassou N’Guesso’s opponent in such a short time? The investigation will undoubtedly allow the public to be enlightened.