Jean-Michel Bokamba-Yangouma

Jean-Michel Bokamba-Yangouma (died 23 June 2020) was a Congolese politician. He was a prominent political figure from the 1970s to the 1990s, heading the Congolese Trade Union Confederation (Confédération syndicale congolaise, CSC). He was the President of the General Movement for the Construction of Congo (Mouvement général pour la construction du Congo, MGCC), a political party.

Political career Bokamba-Yangouma was from Cuvette Region in northern Congo-Brazzaville. He was the Secretary-General of the CSC from 1974 to 1997. During the single party rule of the Congolese Labour Party (PCT), he also became a member of the PCT Political Bureau in 1979 and was assigned responsibility for party organization. In addition, he was Secretary of the Central Committee in charge of the coordination of the party and the activities of mass organizations from 1984 to 1990. He remained on the Political Bureau until 1991. Bokamba-Yangouma joined the opposition shortly before the February–June 1991 National Conference, and in April 2001, he returned to Congo-Brazzaville to participate in a national dialogue as part of the FPDRN delegation. He subsequently returned on a permanent basis and met with President Denis Sassou Nguesso.

Bokamba-Yangouma later dissolved the UDPS and founded the General Movement of Christians of Congo (Mouvement général des chrétiens du Congo, MGCC), a religiously-oriented party, in May 2004. As President of the MGCC, Bokamba-Yangouma said that the party would be inclusive and that non-Christians could join, "provided that they share the ideals of our party". Due to a constitutional prohibition on religious political parties, the MGCC was subsequently renamed as the General Movement for the Construction of Congo (Mouvement général pour la construction du Congo), retaining its acronym.

The MGCC held its first ordinary congress on 31 March 2007, stressing the importance of love and unity in the development of "a new and prosperous Congo". Bokamba-Yangouma called for the 2007 parliamentary election to be delayed due to the existence of what he described as a "legal vacuum"; this was a reference to the fact that a bill providing for the creation of an independent electoral commission had been approved by the National Assembly but not signed into law by Sassou Nguesso in time for the election. Like many other opposition parties, the MGCC boycotted the election. By early 2008, the MGCC identified itself as a centrist party and distanced itself from the opposition. Together with another party, the Union for the Reconstruction and Development of Congo (URDC), the MGCC formed a coalition, the Coalition of Center Parties (CPC), in April 2008. Bokamba-Yangouma was designated as the first President of the Coalition.

Bokamba-Yangouma supported Sassou Nguesso's bid for another term in the July 2009 presidential election. He was included on the 91-member National Coordination of the National Initiative for Peace (INP), a political association promoting Sassou Nguesso's 2009 re-election in conjunction with the preservation of peace, which was launched on 28 February 2009.

On 12 April 2012, Bokamba-Yangouma, who was serving as Vice-President of the CPC coalition at the time, was suspended from the coalition on the grounds that he had not respected its rules. He stood as an MGCC candidate in Mossaka in the July–August 2012 parliamentary election, but he did not win a seat. As national coordinator for the grouping of "center" parties, he said in January 2016 that his grouping would support President Sassou Nguesso in the March 2016 presidential election.

Death Jean Michel Bokamba-Yangouma died in the evening of 23 June 2020 in Brazzaville from the effects of COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of the Congo. He was buried the next morning, in accordance with health protocol, in the cemetery of downtown Brazzaville.