Central Africa begins search for new leader

Soldiers from the international peacekeeping mission keep guard at the end of a speech by transitional parliament chief Alexandre-Ferdinand Nguendet to former members of the Central African Army Forces in Bangui yesterday.

AFP/Bangui

A special session of parliament convened to elect a new interim leader for the poor landlocked country of 4.6mn people, where a terrifying spiral of atrocities pitted Muslims against the Christian majority. Rebel-leader-turned-president Michel Djotodia resigned last week under international pressure.

As the 135 members of the transitional ruling body (CNT) began their deliberations, police patrolled the streets of the capital Bangui for the first time in weeks, after 100,000 residents fled the city.

French and African troops also maintained a massive presence in the capital.

Monday night had been quiet with no reports of fresh looting, which had raged across Bangui while Christian militias fought Muslim former rebels, residents told AFP.

Almost 150 staff at one of the main hospitals in town, the Hopital de l’Amitie, returned to work after fleeing at the height of clashes early in December, Save the Children said yesterday. The returnees represented nearly half of the personnel.

More than 500 patients have already been admitted this week, with the premises under the guard of Burundian soldiers from the MISCA African peacekeeping force, the charity said in a statement.

“The hospital is in a very populous part of the town, where many people have been displaced. The health care needs are enormous here,” hospital director Abdulkarim Zakaria said.

National Save the Children director Robert Lankenau said the establishment could now deal with “people who really need our help, from young children with malaria to mothers in need of urgent caesarian operations”, but he lamented a lack of medicines.

Despite positive signs, few of the displaced scores of thousands who had fled to a sprawling, overcrowded tent city by Bangui’s airport—where 3,500 MISCA soldiers and 1,600 French troops are based—were willing to risk going home.  

There was “no large-scale return”, said a representative of medical charity Doctors without Borders (MSF). “People remain very cautious. They are aware that the situation is still volatile.”

Current interim leader Alexandre-Ferdinand Nguendet, the speaker of parliament, had Monday urged fearful people to return home once the violence abated after Djotodia stepped down on Friday.  Nguendet, one of about a dozen potential candidates for interim president, seemed in campaign mode when he visited soldiers at an elite administration academy yesterday, saying: “I am the man of the situation.”

Also yesterday , a UN report said exactions had decreased in recent days but that the situation remained unstable, adding that around 40 deaths had been recorded in Bangui since Friday.

UN special representative Babacar Gaye said he was optimistic of a quick resolution to the political crisis but warned that “hatred is still present” between Muslims and Christians.

Opening the CNT session, Koyassoum Doumta, the body’s vice president, urged his colleagues to elect “someone who represents peace, national reconciliation and who will supervise future elections in a spirit of transparency”.

Doumta told AFP afterwards that she hoped the election would be held as early as Saturday.

“We need a neutral man, linked neither to the anti-balaka or the Seleka,” said Edgar Mbaikoua, a CNT member presenting himself as “independent” at a cocktail party in the basement of the parliament building.  Djotodia, the first Muslim to lead the mainly Christian country, resigned at a summit of his regional peers after failing to halt the inter-religious violence in the wake of a March coup that ousted president Francois Bozize.