Jacques Joachim Yhombi-Opango was a Congolese politician.
22 Facts About Joachim Yhombi-Opango
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango was an army officer who became Congo-Brazzaville's first general and served as Head of State of the People's Republic of the Congo from 1977 to 1979.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango was the President of the Rally for Democracy and Development, a political party, and served as Prime Minister from 1993 to 1996.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango married Marie-Noelle Ngollo, with whom he had several children.
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Under President Marien Ngouabi, Joachim Yhombi-Opango was Army Chief of Staff ; he was suspended from that position on 30 July 1970, but subsequently restored to it.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango was a member of the ruling Congolese Labour Party and was associated with the party's right-wing.
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Leftist elements in the PCT claimed in a broadcast on Voice of the Revolution radio on 22 February 1972 that Joachim Yhombi-Opango was trying to take power in a rightist coup and that he had ordered the arrest of members of the PCT Political Bureau.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango became a member of the Central Committee of the PCT in 1972.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango was then promoted to the rank of Colonel and became a member of the PCT's Political Bureau in January 1973.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango served as Secretary-General of the Council of State until being moved to the post of Council of State delegate in charge of Defence on 9 November 1974.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango served in office for nearly two years until being forced to resign in February 1979.
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In September 1987, Joachim Yhombi-Opango was arrested in connection with this plot.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango allied with President Pascal Lissouba and Lissouba's party, the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy, in the first round of the 1993 parliamentary election, held in May, and after the election Lissouba appointed him as Prime Minister on 23 June 1993.
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In December 2001, Joachim Yhombi-Opango joined two other exiled politicians, Lissouba and Bernard Kolelas, in rejecting the electoral process begun under Sassou-Nguesso, saying that it was not transparent.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango was sentenced in absentia to 20 years of hard labor for embezzlement in late December 2001.
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An amnesty for Joachim Yhombi-Opango was approved by the Congolese Council of Ministers on 18 May 2007.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango returned to Congo-Brazzaville on 10 August 2007, and a thousand of his supporters were present to welcome him.
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At a meeting of the RDD Steering Committee on 8 September 2007, Joachim Yhombi-Opango reassumed the leadership of the party from interim president Saturnin Okabe and Secretary-General Martial Mathieu Kani.
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On this occasion, Joachim Yhombi-Opango announced his intention to reorganize the party and improve its position on the national political scene.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango spent over a year in France for medical reasons before returning to Brazzaville on 1 June 2013.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango died on 30 March 2020, at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, from COVID-19 at the age of 81.
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Joachim Yhombi-Opango was buried in Owando, Congo, on 31 October 2020.