10 March 2002 2009 → 89.4% 2.8% | Turnout 74.7% Start date March 10, 2002 | |
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Congolese Labour Party Pan-African Union for Social Democracy | ||
A presidential election was held in the Republic of the Congo on 10 March 2002. This followed the country's second civil war (1997-1999), which returned Denis Sassou Nguesso to power, and a subsequent transitional period, in which a new constitution was written and approved by referendum in January 2002.
The election lacked meaningful opposition participation, as the main opposition leaders—particularly former President Pascal Lissouba of the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS) and former Prime Minister Bernard Kolélas of the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI)—were in exile, prevented from returning to Congo by legal convictions and sentences that were handed down in absentia. The only important opposition figure left to contest the election was former Prime Minister André Milongo of the Union for Democracy and the Republic (UDR), but he withdrew a few days before the election, claiming that it would be fraudulent.
Sassou Nguesso, standing as the candidate of his own Congolese Labour Party (PCT) and a coalition, the United Democratic Forces (FDU), was overwhelmingly elected, receiving nearly 90% of the vote against a field of minor challengers. He was sworn in on 14 August 2002 in a ceremony at the Palace of Congress in Brazzaville in the presence of seven other African heads of state.
Provisional results were announced by the Minister of the Interior, Pierre Oba, on 13 March 2002; final results, which were only slightly different from the provisional results, were proclaimed by the Supreme Court on 29 March. There were 1,733,943 registered voters at the time of the election, 1,295,319 of whom voted. 92,706 votes were invalid, leaving 1,202,611 valid votes. 1,075,247 of those votes went to Sassou Nguesso.