Seven to run for Central African Republic president

Bangui, Central African Republic: Seven candidates have been approved to stand in the Central African Republic s December presidential election, inclu...

Bangui, Central African Republic: Seven candidates have been approved to stand in the Central African Republic's December presidential election, including current leader Faustin Archange Touadera and two leading critics, the electoral body said on Friday.

The opposition has accused Touadera, who was first elected in 2016, of wishing to cling on as president-for-life in the unstable former French colony by running for a third term -- which was made possible by a 2023 change in the constitution.

Both of his top critics on the ballot paper, ex-prime minister Henri-Marie Dondra and the main opposition leader Anicet-Georges Dologuele, had feared they would be barred from the election over nationality requirements.

Dologuele, who had previously made a tilt for the top job in 2020, had given up his French nationality in August to conform with the requirement -- also imposed by the 2023 constitutional tinkering -- for candidates to hold only one citizenship.

But months after he abandoned his French citizenship, the courts stripped him of Centrafrican passport in mid-October, prompting Dologuele to file a complaint to the United Nations human rights office on Wednesday.