KINSHASA (Reuters) – When Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi was declared the winner of another contested election on Sunday, he pledged to be the leader of all 100 million people.
Accusations by opposition leaders of electoral fraud and political repression, however, are likely to mar his second term as it did his first. His main rivals rejected Sunday’s result before it was announced and demanded a replay.
Speaking to supporters at his campaign headquarters in the capital Kinshasa, Tshisekedi called for unity.
“I will govern with a spirit of openness during this second term,” Tshisekedi told the cheering crowd, adding that he would focus on job creation, security and a more diversified and competitive economy.
The result sets the stage for a tense political standoff with the potential for the kind of violence that followed contested elections in 2018, 2011 and 2006.
There may also be international ramifications. Congo is the world’s largest supplier of cobalt, used to make batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones, and the third largest producer of copper.
Tshisekedi, 60, son of longtime opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, inherited his father’s considerable support after his death in 2017 after years in the shadows.
However, the results of the votes reviewed by Reuters at the time from the Roman Catholic Church in Congo, which had a team of 40,000 observers, showed the second opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, as the winner in 2018.
Fayulu suspected that Tshisekedi had struck a deal with outgoing President Joseph Kabila, who could not run due to term limits. Fayulu denounced the result as a “constitutional coup”, which Tshisekedi and Kabila rejected.
With Kabila’s help, Tshisekedi was able to win much-needed support in parliament and the security establishment during his first years in office. But the alliance quickly fell apart as he tried to strengthen his hand by placing supporters in key positions.
As he launched his re-election campaign, Tshisekedi told supporters he needed more time to consolidate gains and deliver on promises to roll back decades of authoritarian rule, root out corruption, rebuild the economy, tackle inequality and to address the ongoing security crisis in eastern Congo.
“In just two years we were able to do all these actions you saw, but we can do better,” Tshisekedi told a packed stadium in Kinshasa on November 19, adding that his first two years in office had been limited by power-sharing agreement with Kabila.
But critics said Tshisekedi had failed and accused him of stifling dissent, as his predecessors had done.
A group of nine rival presidential candidates, including Fayulu and opposition front-runner Moise Katumbi, called on their supporters on Sunday to take to the streets to protest what they called a “sham election”.
While economic growth has risen sharply under Tshisekedi’s watch, largely due to demand for key minerals, a fraction of the revenue has reached the roughly 62 percent of Congo’s population who live on less than a dollar a day.
The cost of living has soared with the devaluation of the Congolese franc, with annual inflation exceeding 30 percent in December, according to the country’s statistics institute.
Although Tshisekedi declared a state of siege in two eastern provinces in May 2021 and increased defense spending, his administration has struggled to contain the numerous armed groups behind attacks that have killed thousands of people and displaced nearly 7 million in the east.
In a worrying development, Kornei Nangaa, leader of a new alliance that includes rebels and political factions in eastern Congo, rejected the election and vowed on Sunday to “march to Kinshasa”.
(Writing by Bate Felix; editing by Alexandra Zavis and Nick McPhee)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
