Presidential challenger Anicet-Georges Dologuele speaks to the media after casting his vote at the town hall polling station in Bangui, C.African Republic, Dec. 27, 2020. -

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Central African Republic

Top Central African Republic opposition figure Anicet-Georges Dologuele on Wednesday criticised the state's "abuse of power" after he was prevented from leaving the country on the pretext he had lost his citizenship.

Dologuele, a former prime minister and a leading critic of President Faustin-Archange Touadera, has been locked in a legal dispute since a court in October ruled that he had lost his Centrafrican citizenship as he also held French nationality.

He said that he had been prevented from travelling on Tuesday morning just as he was about to board a flight to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

He was due to attend a meeting of the African Union Peace Fund, whose board of directors he has chaired since 2018.

"The minister of the interior... has clearly decided that I was not entitled to a Centrafrican passport and that I was banned from leaving the country," Dologuele told a press conference on Wednesday, which he called an "abuse of power by the state".

Just months before the court invalidated his Centrafrican citizenship, Dologuele gave up his French passport in August to allow him to run against Touadera in the December presidential election.

After Touadera was declared the winner with nearly 78 percent of the vote, the runner-up ex-prime minister denounced a "massive fraud" and filed an appeal.

A large section of the opposition boycotted the vote, in which Touadera was allowed to stand for a third term after changing the constitution in 2023.

Dologuele also finished second to Touadera in the 2016 and 2020 elections, both of which were marred by suspicions of fraud.

Central African opposition leader banned from travel, accused of abusing power

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