Congolese Party of Labour
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| “ | Work, democracy, peace. | „ |
| ~ The motto of the PCT. |
The Congolese Party of Labour (French: Parti congolais du travail, PCT), founded in 1969 by Marien Ngouabi, is the ruling political party of the Republic of the Congo.
It was originally a Marxist–Leninist pro-Soviet vanguard party which founded the People's Republic of the Congo, but moved towards a moderate left-wing stance in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. The party later adopted social democracy as its ideological basis during its sixth extraordinary congress in 2006. Denis Sassou Nguesso is President of the PCT Central Committee, and Pierre Ngolo is the PCT's Secretary-General.
History edit
The PCT was founded by President Marien Ngouabi on 29 December 1969, and was Congo-Brazzaville's sole ruling party from its inception. From the outset, it was heavily dominated by military officers from the sparsely populated north of Congo-Brazzaville. Although the PCT regime was designed as a Soviet-style socialist one-party state, it was essentially a military regime with a strongly ethno-regional character. Members of the southern ethnic groups, who were far more numerous than northerners, were included in the power structure, but the top leaders were consistently northerners.
Ideologically, the party represented a spectrum of Marxist-Leninist views and suffered from internecine struggles in the 1970s, which sometimes turned violent. Some leaders on the left-wing of the party, such as Ange Diawara and Claude-Ernest Ndalla, favored a radical pro-Chinese position; they unsuccessfully attempted a coup d'etat against Ngouabi in February 1972. The right wing of the party, which was derided as having only a superficial commitment to Marxism-Leninism, was represented by Joachim Yhombi Opango; the 1972 plot was inspired by the left wing's loathing for Yhombi Opango.
Ngouabi was assassinated under unclear circumstances in March 1977, and Yhombi Opango succeeded him. However, Yhombi Opango's opponents in the PCT were angered by his rightist "deviationism" and perceived marginalization of the party, and they ousted him in a February 1979 technical coup, installing Denis Sassou Nguesso—another career officer from the north—in power. The elevation of Sassou Nguesso, who represented the PCT's left-wing, marked a return to party orthodoxy. Nevertheless, Sassou Nguesso was neither a radical leftist nor an ideologue; his policies were generally marked by pragmatism, and he sought warm relations with the West as well as the Eastern Bloc.
Serious unrest in 1990 resulted in the collapse of the PCT regime. Sassou Nguesso was forced to introduce multi-party politics in 1990 and then call a National Conference in 1991. The National Conference saw severe criticism of Sassou Nguesso and repudiated PCT rule; it set up a non-PCT transitional government and reduced Sassou Nguesso to figurehead status.
The PCT was in opposition from 1992 to 1997, during the presidency of Pascal Lissouba. Although Marxist-Leninist ideology was abandoned, the party remained loyal to Sassou Nguesso and it continued to be dominated by key figures from the one-party era. Sassou Nguesso ultimately returned to power in the June–October 1997 civil war.
The PCT is essentially non-ideological today and is simply based around support for President Sassou Nguesso and his development policies. Although it has varying levels of support across the country, its key support base remains the north; in some northern districts, support for the PCT is so overwhelming that its parliamentary candidates win "Soviet-style" electoral returns, approaching 100% of the vote.
In the July–August 2012 parliamentary election, the PCT won a parliamentary majority for the first time in the multiparty era, obtaining 89 out of 139 seats.
Human rights violations edit
According to Amnesty International, notable issues in the Republic of the Congo include unsatisfactory access to water and electricity, the dispossession of indigenous and local communities by multinational corporations in complicity with local authorities, a significant number of political prisoners, repression of foreign journalists via legal proceedings and attacks by police, general limiting of political freedoms, violations of the right to a fair trial, rape and other forms of sexual assault, torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions, summary executions, ill-treatment within prisons, discrimination and marginalization of indigenous peoples in spite of a specific laws protecting them, and threats against human rights defenders.
The media is classed as non-free. It is owned or controlled by the government. There is one government-owned television station, three government-owned radio stations, and three private pro-government radio stations, and a government-owned newspaper.