People in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been waiting a long time – since independence from Belgium in 1960 – for a democratic transition of power. They waited two years for this election, and they waited days for its result. Early on Thursday, the country’s electoral commission announced that an opposition candidate had won. This was indeed unprecedented, but not in quite the way many had hoped for: it looks, in the words of one analyst of democracy in Africa, like “the first election rigged by the government in favour of an opposition candidate”.
Felix Tshisekedi is said to have defeated not only president Joseph Kabila’s hand-picked successor, Emmanuel Shadary, but also the clear frontrunner, Martin Fayulu, who has denounced the results as an “electoral coup”. Critically, the country’s respected Catholic church has said that the official results do not tally with data gathered by its 40,000 observers. The key to this bizarre development is not Mr Tshisekedi but Mr Kabila. His government has left half of DRC’s 80 million people living on less than a dollar a day, despite its immense mineral resources, while he and those around him have amassed huge wealth. Human rights groups say thousands of civilians have been killed by security forces and armed groups in the last two years. A devastating humanitarian crisis continues.
