A new prime minister was appointed Friday in the Central African Republic in a presidential decree read on national radio six months after the contested re-election of the head of state Faustin Archange Touadéra.
"Mr. Henri Marie Dondra is appointed prime minister, head of government"
in a decree
"which takes effect from the date of its signature"
on June 11.
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Senior executive of the presidential party, Henri Marie Dondra had been Minister of Finance and Budget for five years.
He replaces Firmin Ngrebada who had held the post since February 2019 and who had resigned the day before.
Reputed to be close to President Touadéra, he is also known to be familiar with the intricacies of international finance and the aid programs of the second least developed country in the world according to the UN.
President Touadéra was re-elected on December 27, 2020 but in a ballot for which less than one in three voters had the opportunity to go to the polls in the midst of the rebel offensive, in a country ravaged since 2013 by a civil war which nevertheless considerably reduced in intensity since 2018.
Since the end of December, in the face of a rebellion aimed at overthrowing him, the army of the barely re-elected president has reconquered much of more than two-thirds of the territory previously controlled by armed rebel groups, but only thanks to the commitment hundreds of Russian paramilitaries dispatched by Moscow.
