Prime Minister of the Central African Republic on Thursday, Firmin Ngrebada, June 10 announced that his government had tendered its resignation.
The development also comes amid a turbulent week in Bangui after the French military announced it was suspending military operations with the Central African Republic.
Ngrebada wrote in a tweet;
“I have just handed over to His Excellency the President of the Republic His Excellency Pr Faustin Archange Touadera my resignation and that of the government.”
Presidential spokesman, Albert Yaloke Mokpeme however told AFP that he may be asked to stay and form a new government.
Meanwhile, Mokpeme stated;
“We will know within a few hours if the president keeps the prime minister on.”
A former chief of staff to Touadera, Ngrebada had been in post since early 2019. Critics had been calling for Ngrebada’s ouster since March when President Faustin Touadera was sworn in for another five-year term. Some raised concern about the prime minister’s apparent ties to Russia, whose influence in the former French colony is growing.
The prime minister had been appointed to the job as part of a 2019 peace deal in Khartoum that now appears on the verge of collapse.
Central African Republic is the second least-developed country in the world, according to the UN and suffers from the aftermath of a brutal civil conflict that erupted in 2013. Touadera was re-elected in December on a turnout of fewer than one in three voters.
The ballot was hampered by armed groups that at the time controlled around two-thirds of the country, and rebels mounted an offensive in the runup to polling day. Since then, the army, backed by UN peacekeepers, Rwandan special forces and Russian paramilitaries, has wrested much of the territory from rebel control.
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