Ange-Félix Patassé

Ange-Félix Patassé (25 January 1937 – 5 April 2011) was a Central African politician who was president of the Central African Republic from 1993 until 2003, when he was deposed by the rebel leader François Bozizé in the 2003 coup d'état.

He finished his studies in Paris in 1959, a year before the independence of the Central African Republic.

Patassé joined the Central African civil service in 1959, shortly before independence.

Patassé was the first president in the CAR's history (since 1960) to be chosen in what was generally regarded as a fairly democratic election (1993) in that it was brought about by donor pressure on President André Kolingba and assisted by the United Nations Electoral Assistance Unit.

He became an agricultural engineer and agricultural inspector in the Ministry of Agriculture in July 1963, under President David Dacko.

In December 1965, Dacko appointed him Director of Agriculture and Minister of Development.

In 1966, Jean-Bédel Bokassa took power in a coup d'état.

Patassé was the "cousin" of President Bokassa's principal wife, Catherine Denguiadé, and gained the confidence of the new president, serving in almost all the governments formed by Bokassa.

After Bokassa's creation of the Council for the Central African Revolution (in imitation of the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council), Patassé was named a member of the Council of the Revolution with the rank of Prime Minister in charge of Posts and Communications, Tourism, Water, Forests, Hunting and Fishing, as well as Custodian of the Seats of State (4 September 1976 – 14 December 1976).

During this period Patassé followed Bokassa in becoming a convert to Islam for a few months, and changed his name to Mustafa Patassé.

After Bokassa became Emperor Bokassa I, Patassé was named Prime Minister and Head of the first Imperial Government.

He remained in this position for 2 1/2 years, when a public announcement was made that Patassé had stepped down from office due to health problems.

Patassé then left for France, where he remained in exile until the overthrow of Bokassa in September 1979.

Shortly before Bokassa's overthrow, Patassé announced his opposition to the Emperor and founded the Front de Libération du Peuple Centrafricain (FLPC; Front for the Liberation of the Central African People).

Emperor Bokassa was overthrown and President David Dacko restored to power by the French in 1979.

Dacko ordered Patassé to be put under house arrest.

Patassé attempted to escape to the Republic of Chad, but failed and was arrested again.

He was later released due to alleged health problems.

Patassé returned to the CAR to present himself as a candidate for the presidential election of 15 March 1981, after which it was announced that Patassé gained 38% of the votes and thus came in second, after President Dacko.

Patassé denounced the election results as rigged.

Several months later, on 1 September 1981, General André Kolingba overthrew Dacko in a bloodless coup and took power, after which he forbade political activity in the country.

Patassé felt obliged to leave the Central African Republic to live in exile once again, but on 27 February 1982, Patassé returned to the Central African Republic and participated in an unsuccessful coup d'état attempt against General Kolingba with the help of a few military officers such as General François Bozizé.

Four days later, having failed to gain the support of the military forces, Patassé went in disguise to the French Embassy to seek refuge.

After heated negotiations between President Kolingba and the French, Patassé was allowed to leave for exile in Togo.

After remaining abroad for almost a decade, of which several years were spent in France, Patassé returned to the Central African Republic in 1992 to participate in presidential elections as head of the Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People (MLPC).

The donor community, with the fall of the Soviet Union, saw no need to prop up the Kolingba regime and so had pressed for change helping to organize elections with some help from the UN Electoral Assistance Unit and with logistical support from the French army.

However, during his first term in office (1993–1999), three military mutinies in 1996–1997 led to increasing conflict between so-called "northerners" (like Patassé) and "southerners" (like his predecessor President André Kolingba).

Expatriate mediators and peacekeeping troops were brought in to negotiate peace accords between Patassé and the mutineers and to maintain law and order.

During his second term as president, Patassé increasingly lost the support of many of his long-time allies as well as the French, who had intervened to support him during his first term in office.

After the Kolingba regime sabotaged a first set of elections in 1992, which Patassé would have probably won, a second set of elections was held and on the second round on 19 September 1993, he came in first with 37 percent of the vote—well ahead of his nearest competitors, Kolingba, David Dacko and Abel Goumba.

He defeated Goumba in the runoff.

Largely thanks to the foreign pressure notably from the USA and technical support from the UN, for the first time the elections were fair and democratic.

He was chosen a second time in a fair election (1999) as well.

Patassé was ousted in March 2003 and went into exile in Togo.

Patassé was born in Paoua, the capital of the northwestern province of Ouham Pendé in the colony of Ubangi-Shari in French Equatorial Africa, and he belonged to the Sara-Kaba ethnic group which predominates in the region around Paoua.

Patassé's father, Paul Ngakoutou, who had served in the Free French military forces during the Second World War and afterwards worked for the colonial administration in the Province of Ouham-Pendé, was a member of the Sara-kaba people and was raised in a small village to the northeast of Boguila.

Patassé's mother, Véronique Goumba, belonged to the Kare ethnic group of northwestern Ubangi-Shari.

As Patassé spent much of his youth in Paoua he was associated with the Ouham-Pendé province and many of his most loyal political supporters were ethnic Kaba.

After attending school in Ubangi-Shari, Patassé studied in an agricultural institute in Puy-de-Dôme, France, where he received a Technical Baccalaureate which allowed him to enroll in the Superior Academy of Tropical Agriculture in Nogent-sur-Marne, and then in the National Agronomical Institute in Paris.

Specializing in zootechnology, he received a diploma from the Center for the Artificial Insemination of Domestic Animals in Rambouillet, France.