Bemba\u00a0<\/a>was one of six\u00a0presidential hopefuls<\/a>\u00a0who were\u00a0banned from running<\/a>\u00a0in the December 23 election by the country\u2019s election commission. Bemba appealed the ruling, but on Monday, the Constitutional Court upheld the decision, citing his International Criminal Court (ICC) conviction for bribing witnesses during his war crimes trial.<\/span><\/p>\n In an exclusive interview with FRANCE 24, Bemba denounced the looming election as a sham, saying it is being controlled by the government.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>The Constitutional Court is under orders from the current government,\u201d he said in a telephone call from Belgium. \u201cWhat we\u2019ll see in the next months is a selection of candidates chosen by the ruling party, which will lead to a parody of an election, if there even is an election, come December.\u201d<\/p>\n Bemba also said the ballots are already being rigged.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s very worrying that opposition candidates are being chosen, and that these electronic voting machines are used nowhere else in the world.\u00a0And<\/em>\u00a0that there are six million fake voters who are registered on the voting lists. This is how the stage has been set for what should be democratic, transparent and inclusive elections.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former DR Congo warlord-turned-politician who has been banned from running in the country\u2019s upcoming presidential election, on Tuesday told FRANCE 24 that the December vote will be nothing but \u201ca parody\u201d. Bemba\u00a0was one of six\u00a0presidential hopefuls\u00a0who were\u00a0banned from running\u00a0in the December 23 election by the country\u2019s election commission. Bemba appealed the ruling, but on Monday, the Constitutional… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1826,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}