On Wednesday, a high-profile political standoff unfolded in the Central African Republic (CAR) when major opposition figure and former prime minister Anicet Georges Dologuélé publicly condemned the seizure of his diplomatic passport, labeling the move a blatant abuse of executive power by the current administration.
The incident unfolded at Bangui’s international airport, where Dologuélé — who held the prime minister’s office from 1999 to 2001 — was blocked from boarding a flight bound for an African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Speaking to reporters shortly after the denial of departure at a press conference in the CAR capital, Dologuélé revealed that authorities had barred him from exiting the country after branding him stateless within his own homeland.
Dologuélé has served on the board of directors of the African Union Peace Fund since 2018, a position that made his planned attendance at the Addis Ababa meeting a formal professional obligation. The political conflict between Dologuélé and current CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra stretches back to last year’s controversial presidential election, where Dologuélé ran against the incumbent.
To meet CAR constitutional requirements for presidential candidates, which bar dual citizenship, Dologuélé formally renounced his French citizenship in 2023 ahead of the vote. Since the election, he has repeatedly denounced the poll results, claiming the outcome was deeply flawed and “very far from the truth” — a stance that has put him in persistent opposition to Touadéra’s government. Official results from CAR’s electoral commission recorded Dologuélé winning 13.1% of the national vote.
Following the election, the former prime minister had been relying on his diplomatic passport, which he retained as a former head of government. He told reporters on Wednesday that the current administration has repeatedly rejected his requests to issue a new standard national passport, leaving his old diplomatic document as his only valid form of international travel documentation.