admin
Kinshasa. — Congolese Prime Minister Samy Badibanga formally resigned yesterday, two days after President Joseph Kabila pledged to appoint a new prime minister under a stalled power-sharing agreement with the opposition.
“The premier tendered his resignation to the president at 1:00 pm,” a source in the prime minister’s office told AFP.
“The president took note of it and told him to handle all current business.”
A cabinet spokesman confirmed Badibanga’s resignation. Kabila had announced in a speech Wednesday that he would name a new prime minister “within 48 hours” and urged the opposition “to overcome its internal squabbles” and hand him a list of candidates for the post of prime minister.
The appointment of a new premier is part of a deal brokered by the influential Catholic church on New Year’s Eve, which aimed to avoid a full-blown crisis in the central African country after Kabila refused to step down when his second and final five-year term ended in December.
The agreement would allow Kabila (45) to remain in office until elections in late 2017, ruling in tandem with a transitional watchdog and a new premier, to be chosen from within the opposition ranks. — AFP.
Online Reporter