The sweeping re-election of outgoing President Félix Tshisekedi is set to be officially announced in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday after the opposition described a vote as a “sham election” and called for it to be annulled.
The result of the presidential election, a single-round election, is beyond doubt given the partial results announced over the last eight days by the Independent National Electoral Commission (Céni), which plans to announce the provisional full results on Sunday afternoon.
On Saturday evening, Félix Tshisekedi, 60, in power since January 2019 and candidate for a second five-year term, received 72% of the vote out of 17.8 million votes counted.
Followed by Moïse Katumbi, rich businessman and former governor of Katanga (southeast), with 18.9% of the vote, Martin Fayulu, unsuccessful candidate in the 2018 presidential election (5.5%) and former prime minister (2008-2012) Adolphe Muzito (1.36%).
The twenty other candidates, including Denis Mukwege, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with female victims of wartime rape, failed to reach 1% of the vote.
“We will never accept this sham election and these results,” the result of “organized fraud,” declared Martin Fayulu this week, as police had just prevented a first protest demonstration.
Félix Tshisekedi’s performance “exceeds all predictions,” notes Trésor Kibangula, political analyst at the Ebuteli Research Institute. “His campaign dynamics worked,” he told AFP. However, the very high levels recorded in certain regions raise “questions” about the “impact of the irregularities” noted by observers.
Almost 44 million voters out of a total of around 100 million inhabitants of the huge Central African country were called upon to elect their president, but also their national and provincial representatives and, for the first time, their local advisors.
The quadruple vote was scheduled for December 20th.
However, due to numerous logistical problems, it was extended from the Ceni until the 21st and continued for several days in certain remote areas, until the 27th, according to a monitoring mission of the Catholic and Protestant Churches.
“Many uncertainties”
According to its own count, this mission found that one candidate “clearly stood out from the others with more than half of the votes.” However, it adds that it has documented “numerous cases of irregularities that could affect the integrity of the results of various elections in certain locations.”
Opponents have accused the government of planning fraud since the beginning of the process and had already described the elections on December 20th as “total chaos”.
Shortly afterwards, around fifteen messages called for “restraint”.
Tensions are feared after the election, in a country with a turbulent and often violent political history, a soil very rich in minerals but a predominantly poor population.
Authorities reiterate that all measures have been taken to prevent riots, particularly in the southeastern mining area, Moïse Katumbi's electoral stronghold.
They also recall that electoral disputes must be submitted to the Constitutional Court, which will in principle be responsible for pronouncing the final results of the presidential elections on January 10th.
But the opponents have made it clear that they will not attack this court, in which they have no trust, nor the Ceni, which they consider to be subject to power.
What will the opposition do under these conditions? “Reactivating the streets against Félix Tshisekedi's victory would be very complicated, especially in Kinshasa,” believes Trésor Kibangula. “All eyes are to the southeast… There are a lot of uncertainties,” he said.
In addition to the tense political climate, the election campaign was also poisoned by the security situation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where tensions have been at their peak for two years with the resurgence of the M23 rebellion backed by neighboring Rwanda.
Some candidates, notably Moïse Katumbi, have been accused of being “foreigners,” a way to discredit them in a country scarred by years of conflict. According to the Ebuteli analyst, the campaign's identity discourses “have led to fractures in Congolese society.” It remains to be seen how the re-elected president will handle “what happens next.”