At around 3 a.m., Jan. 10, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, following numerous delays, Congo’s electoral commission finally declared Felix Tshisekedi the victor in the country’s contentious presidential election. While the declaration of a winner who is not Joseph Kabila – the dictatorial kleptocrat who has been president for the past 18 years – sets the stage for the country’s first democratic transfer of power since achieving independence from Belgium in 1960, many Congo experts and activists fear Tshisekedi’s ascension to the presidency will prove to be nothing more than an elaborate sham orchestrated to keep Kabila in control.
Tshisekedi’s win was announced almost two weeks after the Dec. 30 election. Tshisekedi represents Congo’s oldest political party, founded by his father, which has spent decades in the opposition. Out of a field of 21 candidates, Tshisekedi allegedly garnered just under 40 percent of the vote.
Allegedly, because the second primary opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, a former Exxon executive turned parliamentarian, had been consistently the favorite in the polls leading up to voting day. Fayulu also was named the winner by the Episcopal Council of the Catholic Church (CENCO), which deployed 40,000 observers to monitor the polls on election day and conducted a parallel tally. After determining there was a clear, incontrovertible winner – which the New York Times revealed to be Fayulu – the CENCO urged the Congolese electoral commission (CENI) to release his name and the voting records.
Power-sharing scheme
When the release of election results was postponed by CENI from Jan. 6 to the early hours of Jan 10, mistrust among the main opposition leaders mounted. Tshisekedi’s camp claimed to have met with Kabila’s camp to ensure a peaceful transfer of power–a claim that Kabila’s people vehemently denied. However, Fayulu began to suspect that the reason for the meeting had been to set up a power-sharing arrangement that would allow Kabila to continue to maintain control over the government and his exploitative businesses, as well as to avoid accountability for his multitudinous crimes.
According to Fayulu, who accused the electoral commission, Kabila and Tshisekedi of colluding to manipulate the election results in Tshisekedi’s favor, the power-sharing deal between Tshisekedi and Kabila had become an “open secret.” Fayulu has repeatedly called for transparency in the tallying of the votes. “The Congolese people deserve the truth of the ballot, not another backroom arrangement,” he said.
JWW’s partners on the ground, as well as other activists we’ve consulted, view the announcement of Tshisekedi’s victory as a huge defeat. They claim Tshisekedi was Kabila’s chosen successor all along, and that Kabila’s hand-picked puppet candidate, Emmanuel Shadary, was a mere decoy, since he never had a chance of winning. This appears to be supported by Tshisekedi’s words upon hearing the news of his provisional victory: “I pay tribute to President Joseph Kabila, and today we should no longer see him as an adversary, but rather, a partner in democratic change in our country.”
Kabila may have reasoned that Shadary’s defeat and the rise of one of the opposition candidates would satisfy the masses and solidify the appearance that real change was afoot. This would explain why Shadary conceded his defeat so nonchalantly, saying “the Congolese people have chosen and democracy has triumphed.”
The Catholic Church immediately said the result did not match data collected by its election monitors.
Given that the lion’s share of Congo’s 80 million people voted for Fayulu, amid immense and pervasive dissatisfaction with Kabila’s reign – we can anticipate that the conflict-beleaguered, economically depressed people of the Congo will not take Kabila’s manipulations lying down. Today there is quiet on the ground. Everyone is still processing the results and what they will mean for the country. However, already, numerous countries, including France and Belgium, are questioning the results and demanding that CENI release its data for review.
Power of the people
Fayulu will likely wage his own legal battle against the election commission’s findings, and we can expect his supporters to take to the streets. “The power of the crowd is what the winners should be afraid of,” warned Francesca Bomboko of the Office of Studies for Research and International Consulting, which co-conducted the most credible pre-election opinion poll.
Kabila may think that he has hoodwinked Africa’s largest nation, but the people will prove him wrong. The people are desperate for true democracy and change. Never was this more clear than on election day, when the people of the city of Beni staged their own elections after being excluded from the official vote because of alleged Ebola-related and security concerns. Using handmade paper ballots, which they collected in plastic bags and counted deep into the night, the people of Beni showed the world what true democracy looks like.
This yearning to exercise their civil rights and establish rule of law runs deep throughout the DRC. The fight for freedom from corruption and instability is far from over. However, the Congolese people must be careful. Any new major outbreaks of violence could give the authorities an excuse to halt the transition to a new government or allow the ruling coalition to justify annulling the election results so that it may remain in control of the government indefinitely.
Background to the elections
Following a two-year delay in holding the highly anticipated election to unseat President Joseph Kabila, the people of the DRC finally got the chance to go to the polls on Dec. 30. The lead up was not without its vicissitudes, as a one-week postponement of election day was quickly followed by the exclusion of several opposition strongholds in Congo’s Ebola- and conflict-affected northeast, representing about 4 percent of the population.
The voting took place amidst widespread allegations of irregularities and fraud, including ballot tampering, voter suppression, and an array of technical and logistical issues. Observers from both the Catholic Church and SYMOCEL reported major irregularities. Despite being excluded from the presidential election just days before they were to take to the polls, the people of Beni came out in droves to vote in makeshift elections organized by youth activists determined to exercise their rights and have their voices heard. JWW’s partners report that at least several of the youth organizers have already been arrested.
Despite all this, election day was relatively free of violence, even as the post-election period, as expected, brought additional dramatic turns:
- On Dec. 31, the government shut down cellular telecommunications and internet services until the announcement of official results, citing security concerns stemming from speculation about the outcome.
- On Jan. 2, President Trump deployed 80 troops to Gabon, within close reach of the DRC, in case post-election violence necessitated the evacuation of American citizens, personnel, and diplomatic facilities.
- On Jan. 3, the Episcopal Council of the Congolese Catholic Church (CENCO) – which had 40,000 observers overseeing the elections in many of the country’s polling places – announced that their parallel vote tabulation showed that a single candidate had emerged as a clear winner. CENCO, widely regarded as credible in the DRC, said that whatever irregularities or problems it observed did not intervene with the Congolese peoples’ making a democratic choice. Though legally precluded from announcing a winner, the Catholic Church strongly insinuated that Kabila’s hand-picked successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, had not won.
- Also on Jan. 3, the U.S. State Department threatened sanctions against Congo unless accurate results were published. “Those who undermine the democratic process, threaten the peace, security or stability of the D.R.C., or benefit from corruption may find themselves not welcome in the United States and cut off from the U.S. financial system,” a statement read.
- On Jan. 4, the New York Times revealed that the Catholic Church determined Martin Fayulu as the rightful winner. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council met to discuss a response to the charged elections, but failed to agree on steps forward.
- On Sunday, Jan. 6 – the date results were supposed to be announced – the National Election Commission (CENI) postponed the official announcement of results, claiming that it had received fewer than 50 percent of the vote tally sheets.
- Riot police were deployed to the electoral commission headquarters in Kinshasa amid fears of a disputed result.
What’s next?
Amidst these maneuverings, with new delays or hiccups emerging daily, tensions have been fomenting. While the announced results are provisional and still open to challenge, CENI’s failure to respect the election result will ineluctably plunge the country into a major political crisis. The electoral commission must declare the results transparently, in enough detail for their conclusions to be verified, and if necessary, challenged in court.
Therefore, the international community must remain vigilant and steadfast in its call for legitimacy and transparency in order to ensure the electoral commission does not get away with manipulating results. Should there be any indication of impropriety, the U.S., African Union, and the U.N. Security Council must stand ready to call for thorough and credible investigations before those results are deemed definitive.
The government must immediately restore telecommunication networks and end unnecessary restrictions on the media, as called for by David Kaye, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, who is also a longtime JWW ally. Many international observers and civil society organizations in the DRC fear potential riots and political violence. An information vacuum not only breeds confusion in this chaotic period, but also precludes more rural areas from communicating their results to the electoral commission. Regardless of the final outcome of the election, the DRC’s security forces must respect the rights of all Congolese to freedom of assembly, peaceful protest and political expression. We are sure to see a lot of these in the days to come.