Is the PPRD automatically a member of the FRN?
The FRN, together with President Joseph Kabila Kabange, is the only alternative capable of lifting the DRC out of its current predicament. During his 18 years in power, President Kabila Kabange showed a genuine determination to steer the DRC towards emergence and development. Today, he retains the same passion, love and resolve to free the country from its present impasse.
During a TikTok live broadcast on the evening of 29 October 2026, Madame Sandra Nkulu Kyungu, coordinator of the PPRD in the diaspora, fielded questions from a host of viewers. One kept coming back: is the PPRD, the party founded by President Joseph Kabila Kabange, automatically a member of the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), the politico-military movement led by the same Joseph Kabila Kabange?
“Answering what she called a pertinent question, Madame Nkulu Kyungu was categorical. The FRN, she explained, is a politico-military movement born of the dissolution of the AFC/M23, and it has not yet opened its doors to political organisations and parties.”
She also pointed out that President Kabila never stood under the PPRD banner in the 2006 and 2011 elections: he ran as an independent each time. It is as an independent that he has taken the helm of the FRN, in order to deliver the Congolese people from the tyranny of Félix Tshisekedi and from the bad governance that is blighting the DRC today.
For years, Mr Tshisekedi has waged a systematic campaign of persecution and repression against PPRD officials and activists. Today, several of the party's leading figures are behind bars, among them Aubin Minaku, Emmanuel Shadary and Dunia Kilanga, while other activists are being held incommunicado.
“The make-up of the FRN is common knowledge. The movement includes members from the ruling UDPS, as well as from the UNC, the AFDC and other formations, without their political structures being part of it. To go after the PPRD because one of its members has joined the FRN purely in an individual capacity, she concluded, is simply arbitrary.”
In a recent interview, President Joseph Kabila justified the birth of the FRN by invoking Article 64 of the Congolese Constitution, which states that every Congolese citizen has a duty to thwart anyone who exercises power in breach of the Constitution.
With the political space locked down by Félix Tshisekedi's regime and its determination to amend the Constitution to seek a third term, the conventional electoral route has become obsolete. Revolution is presented as the only legitimate recourse to "liberate the country" and put an end to dictatorship and tyranny.
“The creation of the FRN is rooted in the people's yearning for freedom. Congo's recent past offers several precedents, Mulele's rebellion among them. But observers, and statements surrounding this turn in Goma, also draw a direct parallel with Kabila's own personal and family history. His current stance recalls the 1996 revolution led by his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, which began in the east of the country and set out to topple Mobutu's regime.”
President Kabila also contends that the failings of the Mobutu era (loss of territorial control, anarchy) have returned, creating fertile ground for an uprising against Félix Tshisekedi, who, he says, has imposed the same predatory dictatorship as Mobutu in his day.
“The FRN, together with President Joseph Kabila Kabange, is the only alternative capable of lifting the DRC out of its current predicament. During his 18 years in power, President Kabila Kabange showed a genuine determination to steer the DRC towards emergence and development. Today, he retains the same passion, love and resolve to free the country from its present impasse.”
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