President Touadera has been accused of seeking term extension despite constitutional limits of two four-year terms.
President Faustin-Archange Touadera has set July 30 as the date for a proposed referendum on a new constitution for the Central African Republic that would allow him to seek a new mandate in 2025.
“I have decided … to submit this project for a new constitution to a referendum,” the president said in an address to the nation, posted on Facebook, on Tuesday.
Touadera was elected in 2016 and returned for a second term in 2020 despite widespread accusations of electoral defects and an ongoing rebellion against his government after years of civil war.
Currently, a president can only serve two four-year terms.
His allies proposed the rule change in May last year, arguing that presidential term limits were unusual in many neighboring countries. Critics and opposition parties staged protests last year because the reform would allow Touadera to run again in 2025 for a third term.
The president installed a commission in September to draft the proposed changes. But the country’s highest court declared the committee unconstitutional and overturned it.
In January, Touadera dismissed the country’s top judge, Daniele Darlan, in what critics denounced as a “constitutional coup” over his opposition to presidential decrees aimed at revising the Constitution.
“There won’t be a third term, but the count will be reset to zero, so anyone can apply for a new term, including Touadera if he wants to,” the president’s top adviser, Fidele Gouandjika, told news agency AFP news after the announcement. .
Critics said Touadera was making a brazen power play.
“This new constitution will be written so that Touadera remains president for life,” said Nicolas Tiangaye, a former prime minister and opposition leader.
“Also, the Constitutional Court is illegitimate since Darlan’s impeachment,” he said.
Touadera has also drawn fire from critics for hiring paramilitaries from Russia’s Wagner Group in conflicts between militias that rule large swaths of territory and often clash over access to minerals and other resources.
In February, the Russian ambassador to the Central African Republic said 1,890 “Russian instructors” were present in the country.
The last remaining French troops were also forced to leave in December in the face of an increasingly assertive Russian presence, and Paris accused the CAR authorities of being complicit in an anti-French disinformation campaign allegedly fueled by Russia.
France, the former colonial power, had sent up to 1,600 troops to help stabilize the country after a 2013 coup sparked a civil war along sectarian lines.
Landlocked and rich in minerals but poor in dirt, the Central African Republic has seen few periods of stability since its independence from France in 1960.
