The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) much-anticipated presidential and parliamentary elections took place on Sunday, December 30th. In the past week alone, the elections were postponed by the electoral commission (CENI) from the 23rd to the 30th, and nearly 1.2 million people were excluded from the vote, allegedly due to public safety and security concerns.
These recent developments followed months of unbridled violence throughout the country: multiple massacres in Beni; ethnic violence leaving 100 dead in Yumbi; instability due to refugee influx in the Kasai region; mass rape campaigns in last-mile communities; 330 dead from Ebola, the second deadliest outbreak in history; multiple deaths at opposition rallies. An average of 5,500 people fled their homes every day in the country this year, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
[For more background on the election in the DRC, click here]
The sprawling, resource-rich nation was left to spiral out of control, with President Joseph Kabila reveling in the chaos and manipulating it to his advantage. The greater the dysfunction, the greater control Kabila’s regime could wield over the election process and its result.
So what happened on Sunday? Were the elections free, fair, and transparent as Kabila promised his people and the world? Will the first peaceful transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960 finally take place?
Unfortunately, election monitors and members of local civil society are already reporting troubling irregularities and potential fraud. According to Jewish World Watch’s field representative, who served as an official national election monitor, what happened on Sunday was nothing more than “widespread planned fraud.” He cited the following irregularities shared with him by fellow election monitors across the country, which have been corroborated by reports by the Associated Press and Reuters:
- Several polling stations had no voting machines at all, so disappointed voters would leave only for voting officials to then print fake ballots in their names in support of Kabila’s handpicked candidate and puppet, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary
- Some polling stations didn’t even open until late in the evening, after official voting hours had ended
-
Votes are counted in the dark at a makeshift polling station created by the people of Beni, one of the regions excluded from the vote just days before the election in the DRC.
Some voting machines went out of order for several hours with no technical assistance
- Several polling stations were moved to new locations at the last minute, leaving voters confused about where to go
- Many polling locations lacked the necessary cables, accessories, or access to battery or electrical power necessary for making the electronic voting machines operational
- Illiterate voters were preyed upon by election officials and tricked into voting for Shadary
- Election officials were reported to be stuffing ballots in favor of Shadary
- A human rights defender and national election observer was arrested for pointing out fraud
- Registration lists were missing from many polling locations, so people had to wait in line for hours before voting even began. Nearly 50 Kinshasa polling stations were idle for hours because lists of registered voters had not been delivered
- Many voters could not find their names on lists, so were deprived of the chance to vote altogether
- With many Congolese never having seen a computer before, the voting machines proved intimidating and confusing
So far, the Catholic Church’s election observer mission said it had received 544 reports of malfunctioning voting machines, 115 reports of election observers being kicked out of or denied access to polling locations, and 44 reports of vote-buying or corruption. In South Kivu, a police officer and civilian were killed in an altercation that broke out after voters accused an election official of fraud. The police officer shot and killed a young man involved in melee, and the crowed retaliated, beating the officer to death.
More grim reports like this will likely emerge over the next few days. Many fear widespread post-election violence if Shadary is declared the victor. Felix Tshisekedi, one of the main opposition candidates, accused Congo’s government of deliberately creating an election day maelstrom to spark a court challenge that could allow Kabila to extend his time in power. “I deplore all the disorder,” Tshisekedi said, calling Kabila’s government “responsible for this mess.”
Kabila and the electoral commission may have done their very best to sabotage the election while maintaining the veneer of legitimacy. But the people’s thirst for change and democracy could not be stifled, no matter what obstacles were put in their way. Nowhere was this clearer than in Beni, one of the regions excluded from the presidential vote just a few days before the election.
Beni is an opposition stronghold, mostly populated by the Nande ethnic group, which some Congo researchers and activists believe has been the target of a forced deportation campaign orchestrated by Kabila himself. While mainstream media has attributed the string of civilian massacres in Beni to the Islamic militant group ADF, there is mounting evidence to suggest that Congolese and Rwandan soldiers may be the primary perpetrators, in a coordinated effort to terrorize the Nande peoples into fleeing their resource-rich lands and thriving businesses.
In a poignant, united protest, the people of Beni came out in droves on Sunday and staged their own election. They refused to stand idly by and be silenced. They refused to allow for their rights to be ripped away from them. These people, whose lives have been plagued by mass killings and a horrific Ebola outbreak, came out and joined together to show Kabila and the world what democracy really looks like. These are the people JWW supports. These are our heroes.
Well over 10,000 people lined up across Beni. They created their own polling stations and paper ballots, which voters deposited into large plastic bags. They counted their votes in the dark of night, vowing to deliver the results to the electoral commission in the morning. Through all this, they sang in Swahili, “voting is our right and nobody can stop us.”