Congo’s constitutional court upheld the results of the elections on Sunday, ruling that Felix Tshisekedi won December’s presidential poll. The decision has added to the suspicion that Joseph Kabila, in power for nearly 18 years, negotiated a backroom power-sharing deal with Mr Tshisekedi.
Mr Tshisekedi – son of the country’s most famous opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi who founded the Union for Democracy and Social Progress to oppose the rule of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko – won 39 per cent of the vote, according to the electoral commission. Martin Fayulu – a former ExxonMobil executive and rival opposition candidate backed by the wealthy opposition leaders Moise Katumbi and Jean-Pierre Bemba, both of whom were barred from running – had 35 per cent and ruling party pick Emmanuel Shadary finished a distant third with 24 per cent of the vote.
The government spurned a United Nations offer of support for the poll, even though the UN maintains the world’s biggest peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The electoral commission announced only the total votes for each candidate and provided no breakdown by province and constituency.
Leaked electoral-commission data showed that more people had voted for Mr Fayulu than Mr Tshisekedi. The powerful and respected Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which in the absence of large foreign observers ran the biggest election observation missions, suggested that Mr Fayulu had won by a landslide. The electoral commission denied that its results were fraudulent.
Any court challenge had little prospect of success as the constitutional court, which has the final word on the validity of the vote, is stacked with Kabila loyalists.
Congo, a former Belgian colony of 80m people, is a big producer of copper and cobalt, an essential ingredient in smartphones and electric car batteries. The country has also large deposits of gold, diamonds and tin. Congo’s wealth, however, has not trickled down to its people due to endemic corruption and economic mismanagement. Two-thirds of people live on less than $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank.
The mineral-rich, but impoverished central African nation has not had a peaceful transfer of power since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960. Mr Kabila was required by the constitution to step down in December 2016, but the elections were delayed until street protests, in which dozens died, and international pressure forced him to hold the vote.
Photo MONUSCO/John Bopengo
