Interim Prime Minister Abel Goumba of the Central African Republic (CAR) was sacked on Thursday, government spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Parfait M’Baye announced on state radio.
”Prime Minister Abel Goumba has been relieved of his functions,” said M’Baye, quoting a decree issued by General Francois Bozize, who declared himself president of the impoverished country after seizing power in a coup in March.
Bozize named Goumba, a veteran opposition leader who was a staunch critic of ousted president Ange-Felix Patasse, prime minister a week after seizing power.
Goumba’s sacking came a day before the CAR’s transitional government was due to present an updated policy agenda to the National Transition Council, the country’s de facto Parliament since Bozize’s March 15 coup.
The transitional Parliament last month rejected the first policy agenda proposed by the interim government, which is tasked with restoring stability and order in the CAR and guiding the country to free and transparent elections.
Parliament noted the government’s agenda had a time line that went beyond the agreed end of the transition period calling for elections in late 2004 or early 2005.
It also voiced dissatisfaction over the short time Parliament had been given to study the policy agenda, which the government is required to submit every month but has failed to do since its formation in April.
Parliament recommended then that the government revise its agenda, insisting that it should be ”an emergency programme that is clear and precise, indicating the objectives to be achieved by the end of the transition period, the different stages and means necessary to achieve them, and with a system of monitoring progress”.
In October, about 300 delegates from all walks of life in the CAR wrapped up six weeks of talks aimed at reversing a cycle of military and political crises that have rocked the poor, landlocked country since independence, and which worsened under Patasse, first elected in 1993. — Sapa-AFP