Background
YHOMBI-OPANGO, Joachim was born in 1939, in Fort Rousset (now Owando) in Cuvette Region, in the north of the Congo.
YHOMBI-OPANGO, Joachim was born in 1939, in Fort Rousset (now Owando) in Cuvette Region, in the north of the Congo.
United Military School
The 1972 the left-wing plotters (Diawara, Noumazalay) claimed that they were acting in self-defence to prevent a Yhombi take-over and then- broadcast in the brief periods in which they held the radio station said: “Everyone knows that Major Yhombi is after the post of President of the Republic. Comrade Ngouabi knows full well the facts of the problem.” Yhombi once again, however, demonstrated enthusiastically his loyalty to Ngouabi by his use of the army to severely suppress the putschists and deny any suggestion that he was ambitious for himself.
He and Ngouabi have not been without their differences. In the summer of 1970 he was suspended from his post for a period at a time when Ngouabi was making charges of embourgeoisement and corruption against the army, but was reinstated without charges. He has also been deeply involved in the obscure morale troubles affecting the army prior to February 1973, when elements favouring Diawara’s guerrillas were unmasked. The Diawara plotters claimed Yhombi was a rightist, but prior to 1968 he was military attache at the Congolese Embassy in Moscow and he, like Ngouabi, dispenses revolutionary language.
Probably the second most powerful man in the Congo, he comes from the same area of the north as President Ngouabi and appears to exercise some influence on him. Not that their relations have been entirely happy; plotters have tended to believe that he would support them in overthrowing the regime. In March 1970 the plotters claimed that Yhombi was their leader, but he denied this and the vigour with which he suppressed the putsch demonstrated his loyalty to Ngouabi.
At the time when he was President there have been changes in foreign policy. To normalize relations with France, an extremely tense when Ngouabi were restored diplomatic relations with the United States.
He was currently the President of the Rally for Democracy and Development (RDD), a political party