{Added uncertainty over negotiations to end country’s year-long political crisis.}
Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the opposition in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a critical figure in ongoing negotiations to end the country’s year-long political crisis, has died aged 84.
Bruno Tshibala, the deputy secretary-general of Tshisekedi’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party, said that the veteran politician had died on Wednesday afternoon in Brussels, where he had been undergoing medical treatment for the past week.
Tension rose quickly in Kinshasa on Wednesday night, the DRC capital, after news of Tshisekedi’s death broke. Dozens of people gathered outside the dead leader’s home but they were quickly dispersed by police firing tear gas.
Local media quoted officers as saying that the crowd had become “uncontrollable” but people at the scene denied this.
Tshisekedi’s death leaves the opposition without a popular champion, adding to the already considerable uncertainty over the future of the sprawling, resource-rich central African country, analysts said. The president, Joseph Kabila, is clinging to power despite his term in office ending last December.
Tshisekedi held several government positions in the 1960s and 70s during the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko before falling out with the leader and forming the UDPS in 1982. He was one of the few politicians who stood up to Mobutu and was imprisoned as a result.
Laurent Kabila, who toppled Mobutu in 1997, also jailed Tshisekedi on several occasions.
This did not deter the trained lawyer and he also led the opposition to Joseph Kabila, who took power in 2001 after his father was assassinated. When Joseph Kabila refused to step down in December last year, Tshisekedi initially called for nationwide protests.
But after several dozen people died in anti-Kabila demonstrations, Tshisekedi struck a deal with the ruling coalition that Mr Kabila could stay in office for another year until elections but that the opposition would nominate the prime minister of an interim unity government.
Tshisekedi, who came runner-up to Mr Kabila in the 2011 presidential election, had been expected to lead the body overseeing the implementation of this accord.
Hans Hoebeke, a DRC analyst for the International Crisis Group, a think-tank, said that the country’s “murky waters have become more so”.
“There is a possibility of protests and emotional reaction, potentially violent,” he said. “No one has the popular legitimacy to take over and at this stage it could further destabilise the party and the opposition.”
The opposition had nominated Tshisekedi’s son, Felix Tshisekedi, as prime minister of the new government but Mr Kabila had yet to approve this.
Mr Hoebeke said it was unclear now what would happen to the negotiations to appoint a new government. These talks had effectively stalled in the past fortnight, hurting the opposition’s credibility as much as Mr Kabila’s.
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