The Republic of the Congo, also called Congo-Brazzaville, received full independence from France on Aug. 15, 1960. Since then, the Congolese military took charge of the country.

President Denis Sassou Nguesso has ruled the Republic of the Congo for all but five years since 1979, and is poised to extend his reign for at least another five. After seizing power in a 1979 coup, he ruled as a military dictator throughout the 1980s. Nguesso momentarily lost power in the 1992 elections, but he reclaimed it following a brutal civil war in 1997 and has claimed victory in two fraudulent presidential elections in 2002 and 2009.

The presidential election of March 20, 2016, was supposed to be different. The Congolese constitution limits presidential terms to two and requires that candidates be no older than 70 years of age at the time of inauguration. Nguesso is now 73 and approaching the end of his second term; however, to extend to a third term, on Sept. 17, 2015, the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court gave Nguesso a favorable opinion to change the constitution, so that Nguesso may have a third, fraudulent, presidential term. There is no real judicial power. The president is above all. Dictatorship is the country’s supreme law.

The Election Day was blacked out in Congo-Brazzaville. Government officials ordered mobile phone and Internet services cut across the country, for no reason. Protests did not change the constitution but left at least 18 dead.

Joseph Miakquissa, Lewiston