Africa’s fourth most populous country, the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, goes to the polls in three weeks’ time with a civil war raging, two international peacekeeping forces starting to depart and an EU electoral observers’ mission quitting after the government refused to let them use their own satellite phones.
In a country with a history of stolen elections, the chances of preventing the incumbent president, Félix Tshisekedi, from securing a second five-year term turn on the ability of the diverse opposition to unite around a single credible candidate.
There are 24 candidates in the field, including Denis Mukwege, a Nobel peace prize-winning gynaecologist; Floribert Anzuluni, a banker turned grassroots activist; Aggrey Ngalasi, a pastor; Moïse Katumbi, who was barred from the country to prevent him from standing in the 2018 elections; and Martin Fayulu, a former oil executive from whom the presidency was widely seen to have been stolen in 2018.
There is only one woman in the contest, Marie-Josée Ifoku, who like almost all the candidates promises to tackle a predatory state. Longstanding corruption surrounding diamonds in DRC has expanded into lithium and cobalt, the minerals necessary to power the green energy revolution.
A fragmented opposition in a single first-past-the-post ballot greatly favours the incumbent, so much so that Anzuluni claims 15 of the candidates were “created by the regime”. He said: “It’s clear amongst the opposition we need to create a coalition, but the coalition has to share the same values and agree on a broad political programme that tackles a system in which the political actors see politics as a profit-making enterprise.” His consultations with civil society show security is voters’ top concern.
Talks were held in mid-November in Pretoria between a group of leading candidates to see if they could coalesce around a single figure, but so far no consensus exists.
The already fragile hopes that the poll on 20 December will be conducted lawfully were damaged last Tuesday when the EU announced it was withdrawing its 42-strong team of electoral experts. The mission, headed by a leftwing Swedish MEP, Malin Björk, had been seeking to bring in their own communications equipment and phones but the government said this breached a protocol.
Six of the leading opposition candidates had already complained about the proximity of the independent national electoral commission to Tshisekedi, as well as about delays in publishing voter rolls, a mass of defective identification cards, and a lack of police protection for their campaigns.
The commission is committed to publishing the results of the vote, polling station by polling station, a step that will make it easier for party election agents and a politically activist Catholic church to monitor the tallying process.
Voters have good reasons to be suspicious. In the 2018 elections, an enthusiastic civil society seemed to have grabbed a chance to end the corruption by overwhelmingly rejecting the former president Joseph Kabila’s handpicked successor, Tshisekedi, and instead backing Fayulu.
However, after an apparent deal with Kabila, Tshisekedi was pronounced the winner. Fayalu’s efforts to declare the result invalid were fruitless.
The latest presidential election and local elections take place against the background of a surge in fighting in the east of the country, appalling exploitation in lucrative copper and cobalt mines and the imminent departure of two peacekeeping forces – the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping operation Monuscu and a seven-nation East African Community force.
The EAC mandate is due to expire on Friday, barely a year after the force arrived on its first military intervention, leaving a potentially dangerous security vacuum. The first Kenyan forces in the EAC mission flew out of Goma at the weekend. Monuscu will be gone early in 2024.
Tshisekedi complained that the EAC was not acting on its mandate to force the armed groups present in the east, including the March 23 group, to lay down their arms. DRC is convinced that the M23 is funded and armed by Rwanda. Human Rights Watch has accused the M23 of numerous war crimes and has called for the organisation and any backers in Rwanda to be put on a UN sanctions list.
Fayalu and Katumbi are drawing probably the larger crowds among the contenders, but it is not clear if they would be allowed to win, or even if the elections will go ahead.
