Justin Lekoundzou

Justin Lekoundzou Itihi Ossetoumba is a Congolese politician. He is a founding member of the Congolese Labour Party (PCT), and during the PCT's single-party rule he held important party and government positions in the 1970s and 1980s. He served in the government again from 1997 to 2002 and was elected to the National Assembly of Congo-Brazzaville in 2002.

Lekoundzou was born in Boundji, located in the Cuvette Region of northern Congo-Brazzaville. Under Marien Ngouabi, he was included on the five-member Executive Committee of the ruling National Revolutionary Council (CNR) as President of the Organization Commission on 21 June 1969. When the PCT was founded in December 1969, he became a member of its Political Bureau and was assigned responsibility for state enterprises; he remained on the Political Bureau until December 1971. Lekoundzou was then Minister of Industry, Mines, and Tourism from December 1971 to 30 August 1973. He was also director of the Pointe-Noire oil refinery for a time.

In 1979 Lekoundzou was again elected to the PCT Political Bureau; at that point the body consisted of ten members, and he was assigned responsibility for planning and the economy. Lekoundzou was Minister of Finance from December 1980 until he was instead appointed as Minister of Rural Development on 21 August 1987; he held the latter post until he was replaced in the government named on 13 August 1989. Also in 1989, he was assigned responsibility for organization in the PCT Political Bureau and became the regime's second-ranking figure, under President Denis Sassou Nguesso. In the multiparty 1992 parliamentary election, he was elected to the National Assembly as a PCT candidate.

After Sassou Nguesso returned to power in October 1997 at the end of the 1997 civil war, Lekoundzou was appointed as Minister of State for Reconstruction and Urban Development on 2 November 1997. After a little more than a year, he was instead appointed as Minister to the Presidency in charge of National Defense on 12 January 1999. In the May 2002 parliamentary election, Lekoundzou was elected to the National Assembly as the PCT candidate in Boundji constituency; he received 58.09% of the vote and won the seat in the first round. Following the election, Jacques-Yvon Ndolou was appointed to replace Lekoundzou as Minister to the Presidency in charge of National Defense on 18 August 2002; Ndolou succeeded Lekoundzou in that position on 21 August. Lekoundzou was then chosen as President of the Parliamentary Group of the Presidential Majority on 24 August 2002.

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