KINSHASA—Defeated Congolese presidential contender Jean-Pierre Bemba warned President Joseph Kabila on Wednesday that abuses and corruption could undermine democracy and threatened to call opposition strikes and protests.
It was the strongest public attack on the president by former rebel leader Bemba since he accepted defeat last year in Democratic Republic of Congo's landmark elections.
He fired his verbal broadside just days before a visit to the country by new U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and at a time when a post-election government was being prepared.
Bemba, who had said after losing last year's presidential poll that he would exercise peaceful opposition, attacked the "buying of consciences" and corruption which he said marred senatorial elections held last week, in which Kabila supporters won a clear majority.
"We will use, whenever necessary, all our influence and all means available to us under the constitution, notably protests, strikes and other legal paths of resistance and protest to show our disapproval and, if the case arises, to block the deployment of a dictatorial regime behind a democratic facade," Bemba said in a broadcast on one of the TV stations he controls.
Last year's polls were the first free elections in the former Belgian colony in more than 40 decades and they were protected by the world's largest U.N. peacekeeping force as part of a strategy to try to end years of conflict and chaos.
Some analysts had expressed fears that a Bemba-led opposition could be marginalised and even forced back on to the streets, particularly as Kabila's majority in the new parliament has allowed his legislators to try to dominate key committees.
In the Senate vote last week, Kabila's Alliance of the Presidential Majority (AMP) won 56 seats in the 108-seat upper house, extending its domination of the legislature.
The AMP already controls 332 seats in the 500-seat National Assembly.
Bemba's coalition, the Union for the Nation, won only 18 Senate seats, including a seat won by Bemba himself in Kinshasa, where he traditionally has a strong following.
"The twisting of the law, the corruption of those elected destroy hopes for the establishment of a peaceful democracy and carry the seeds of instability and the erosion of democratic gains," Bemba said in his statement.
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