Incumbent President Fèlix Tshisekedi’s scheme to eliminate Moïse Katumbi from the presidential race has suffered another huge blow after the Constitutional Court threw out surrogate Tshivuadi Mansanga Junior’s petition to invalidate the popular opposition leader’s candidature.
In his efforts to block Katumbi from contesting the 20 December polls, Tshisekedi had puppeted the little-known Tshivuadi and fellow candidate Noël Tshiani into requesting the Constitutional Court to declare Katumbi ineligible to run for president as, among other peddled allegations, he was a foreigner.
However, the Constitutional Court has since declared the Tshivuadi petition “inadmissable” as the Kasai native does not qualify to file a petition against a candidate before the court.
Tshisekedi’s scheme to block Katumbi continues to suffer setbacks with Tshiani’s petition also set to be kicked out for lacking evidence.
In his petition, Tshiani claims that Katumbi holds Italian and Zambian nationalities and therefore should be barred from standing as president.
But the Ensemble Pour la Republique has strongly refuted those assertions by Tshiani with official confirmations from both the Italian and Zambian authorities denying Katumbi to be their national.
