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KINSHASA, April 21, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The Democratic Republic of Congo government said it had suspended the political party of former president Joseph Kabila, days after his properties were raided by security services.

"This decision follows the overt activism" of Kabila, the interior ministry said in a statement dated Saturday.

Kabila was president for 18 years up to 2019 and remains head of his People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD),

PPRD activities "are suspended across all the national territory," the statement said.

Ferdinand Kambere, the PPRD's permanent deputy secretary general, told AFP the opposition party "denounces an arbitrary decision based on rumors and affabulations".

It was, he added, designed to "hide the failure" of the regime in dealing with M23 fighters.

As an opposition party, the PPRD has the right to criticise "the chaotic management" of the crisis, said Kambere.

President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Kabila of preparing "an insurrection" and backing an alliance that includes the M23 armed group fighting government forces in eastern DR Congo.

Kabila, 53, left the country before the last presidential election in 2023, according to a spokesman for his family.

But early April, in a message relayed by his staff, he said he would return at an unspecified date because the country was "in peril".

Unconfirmed reports suggested he would arrive, or was already in, the eastern city of Goma, captured by M23 fighters earlier this year.

- A 'complicit silence' -

On Thursday, a spokesman for the family said the security services had mounted raids on Kabila's main property, a farm east of the Kinshasa, and on a compound belonging to the family in the capital.

The interior ministry statement accused Kabila's party of keeping "a guilty, or even complicit, silence" over "the Rwandan war of aggression".

Kinshasa, UN experts and several international powers have said M23 is backed by Rwanda, which denies the charge.

The armed group is at the centre of a new surge in conflict in eastern DR Congo, having taken the key cities of Goma and Bukavu.

The DR Congo ministry statement said Kabila has maintained an "ambiguous attitude" on the M23 rebellion, which he "has never condemned".

It criticised the "deliberate choice" of Kabila "to enter the country through the city of Goma, under the control of the enemy".

Kambere said it was not a crime for a citizen to go to a territory "abandoned by the powers that be and now occupied by the M23" movement.

A separate statement from the country's justice ministry said the chief prosecutor had been asked to start legal action against Kabila for "his direct participation" in M23.