Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Félix Tshisekedi won last week's chaotic elections by a wide margin, defeating the rest of the candidates with 73.34% of the vote, electoral authorities in the country said on Sunday. However, the president's victory was questioned hours before the announcement by opposition parties, which raised allegations of fraud and encouraged their supporters to protest in the streets.
“Candidate number 20, Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, is provisionally elected,” emphasized the President of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) to the shouts and applause of the audience gathered at the counting center set up in the capital Kinshasa. The Congolese Denis Kadima. According to the organization, the current president received more than 13 million votes out of the 18 million valid ballots. According to Kadima, voter turnout in the disputed elections was around 43%.
Tshisekedi, who was seeking a second five-year term at the helm of the country, has clearly won against the 18.08% of support received by his main opponent, businessman and former governor of the former Katanga (South) province, Moïse Katumbi and 5.33% of opposition leader Martin Fayulu.
However, a group of the main opposition presidential candidates, including Katumbi and Fayulu, called on their supporters this Sunday to take to the streets to protest against the preliminary results. “We categorically reject the electoral farce… and its results,” they said in a joint statement. Opposition leaders called for new elections to be held with a new electoral body on a date agreed by all. “We call on our people to take to the streets en masse after the announcement of election fraud,” they emphasized. The Congolese government had previously rejected calls for new elections.
The candidates who launched the call – including, according to local media, gynecologist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege – called on citizens to mobilize against the “thieves” of their votes, as the Independent National Electoral Commission revealed hours later (CENI) and must to be confirmed by the country's Constitutional Court in January.
Around 44 million people (out of the country's more than 100 million inhabitants) were called on the 20th to exercise their democratic right at 75,000 polling stations and to take part in the presidential, parliamentary, provincial and municipal elections. The elections have been marred by delays, logistical problems and allegations of irregularities from the opposition, which has called for the vote to be canceled and retaken.
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The influential National Bishops' Conference of Congo (CENCO), which monitored the elections, pointed out last Thursday that there were “numerous cases of irregularities” that could alter the results “in certain places.” The election took place on Wednesday last week and was extended until Thursday in areas where logistical problems delayed or prevented voting. In reality, in some of these places they lasted until Monday. The delays were largely due to last-minute voting materials arriving at voting centers.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, one of Africa's most populous countries, has enormous natural resources (including huge reserves of cobalt, which are crucial for the production of batteries for electric vehicles), but infrastructure is poor across much of its territory. The elections also took place in the shadow of the conflict between dozens of armed groups and the army in the east of the country and amid a new escalation in fighting by the “23” rebel movement. March” (M23) took place in the eastern province of Kivu. from the north.
Tshisekedi came to power in 2019 after elections that were also challenged by the opposition but marked the country's first peaceful transfer of power since its independence from Belgium in 1960. His achievement is the country's economic growth despite a complex international situation. and his desire, expressed in numerous gestures, to stabilize the Great Lakes region, which has been affected by violence from dozens of armed groups for decades. In this context, Tshisekedi has launched a denunciation campaign against his neighbor Rwanda, which he accuses of financing the M23, one of the largest rebel groups. The conflict is far from over. The intervention of an international force from the countries of the region has proven to be an insufficient effort to achieve the desired peace. According to the World Bank, economic growth has again failed to lift 60% of Congolese out of the extreme poverty in which they live.
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