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The Democratic Republic of Congo announced a coalition government Monday, seven months after the inauguration of new president Felix Tshisekedi.

“The government is finally here. The president has signed the decree and we will begin work soon,” Prime Minister Sylvestre Ilunga told reporters before the members of the new government were announced by the presidency’s spokesperson.

In the long-delayed election last December, Tshisekedi defeated a candidate officially backed by Kabila, whose own term limit was up, though opposition politicians said the result was rigged in a secret deal between Kabila’s and Tshisekedi’s camps.

They said the deal involved Kabila officially stepping down but maintaining control, a charge they both denied.

The cabinet list released by Prime Minister Illunga Illunkamba yesterday consisted mostly of people with little or no government experience. Of the 65 ministers named, 42 were from Kabila’s coalition and 23 were from Tshisekedi’s.

As well as retaining outsized influence over various security agencies, Kabila’s Common Front for Congo (FCC) coalition won about 70 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament and an overwhelming majority of provincial assembly seats in elections also held on Dec. 30.

Kabila had always been expected to have a big say in the government of Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast, mineral-rich central African country of 80 million people where he had been in charge since the 2001 assassination of his father, Laurent.—News24.