Crisis of legitimacy in DRC elections

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) chaotic elections failed to break the country’s long legacy of fraudulent polls and plunged the government into a fresh crisis of legitimacy. The DRC’s Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) has declared incumbent President Félix Tshisekedi the winner of the country’s presidential election with 72% of the vote. The resounding figure would seem implausible given the strong following of leading opposition candidates and pre-election polling showing no candidate gaining a majority. Moreover, no previous incumbent in the DRC has ever secured more than 48% of the vote, even with allegations of widespread fraud.

The electoral process was engulfed in widespread irregularities that made it difficult to validate CENI’s results. While scheduled for December 20, CENI announced a one-day extension given widespread delays.

However, voting continued through Christmas Day and did not end until December 27, according to an independent audit by DRC’s respected National Episcopal (Catholic) Conference of the Congo (CENCO). These extensions, illegal under Congolese law, mean no one knows when the polls actually closed. CENI has not provided a breakdown of votes by voting station and, on January 2, postponed the release of the provisional results of the national and provincial legislative elections as well as those of the municipal councilors. Such jurisdictional data would enable corroboration with the presidential results based on the relative performance of competing party candidates.

CENCO and the Church of Christ in Congo (CCC), a union of 62 Protestant denominations, asked CENI to account for these anomalies and provide a breakdown of results per polling station. Their combined 60, 000-strong observer mission is the country’s largest ever. Its data showed that over 27% of the polling stations did not open at all and catalogued numerous malpractices like 11% of all voting machines being placed in military schools and 45% of voting machines malfunctioning.

Another local observer, SYMOCEL, found that two-thirds of the polling stations opened late on December 20 and only 57% complied with voting procedures. Opposition candidates and civil society leaders have called for an annulment and re-run. To make matters worse, security forces violently broke up a protest against the results, which many observers called the polls “a gigantic organised disorder.” This clearly shows that the elections were chaotic. Congolese churches documented 5, 402 reports of serious incidents, 60% of which interrupted voting. Their daily reports found numerous shortcomings. Three-quarters of the reports identified malfunctioning voting devices, failure to open polling stations, vote-buying, ransacking of polling material, torn electoral lists, ballot stuffing, and denial of access to local observers.

The chaos was particularly aggravated in many opposition strongholds like Katanga, Kisangani, and North Kivu, amid complaints raised about the unequal distribution of voting kits, blank voter cards by government supporters, registration of minors, violence and intimidation by state agents, and poor quality of voter cards. These errors were substantiated by local and foreign observers.

Voters in war-ravaged areas in eastern DRC were largely disenfranchised. The government announced that, due to insecurity, displaced people in North Kivu and Ituri, some seven million Congolese, as well as residents in M23-controlled areas, would not vote. CENI has promised to set aside seats for them in the national and provincial parliaments. Shockingly, the DRC government refused to accredit observers from the European Union (EU) and the East African Community (EAC), limiting the number of independent election monitors on the ground.

It is worthy to note that the DRC is a country with a long legacy of electoral fraud. The widespread prevalence of irregularities suggest the systemic nature of the electoral manipulation. However, it must be acknowledged that organising elections in the DRC is a monumental task given its vast geography, poor or non-existent infrastructure, and endemic violence, with over 100 rebel groups marauding parts of the country.

However, successive governments have used these constraints as a smokescreen to manipulate democratic institutions. In the 2018 elections, President Tshisekedi’s party presented an ambitious reform programme to break this cycle and put the DRC on a fresh course. However, once in office, he focused his energy on wrestling control of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, as well as the security services from the stranglehold of former President Joseph Kabila’s party. That arrangement resulted from a murky power-sharing deal both men crafted during a delay in announcing the 2018 election results that Martin Fayulu is widely believed to have won.

Nevertheless, hopes remained high that Tshisekedi, despite the dubious means that propelled him to power, could still deliver change given his credentials as heir of the late Étienne Tshisekedi, the venerated “father of Congolese democracy”. However, his leadership style has come to mimic that of the Kabilas. After gaining government control, Tshisekedi has used legal and administrative loopholes to gain control of the judiciary, including the nine-member Constitutional Court, which rules on electoral disputes.

The ruling coalition similarly took control of CENI by refusing to include civil society, faithbased, and opposition representatives in the allocation of seats as required by law. The frustratingly disgusting practice by regional actors is to accept the results announced by the national electoral commission, seen recently in SADC’s recognition of Zimbabwe’s fraudulent elections. Hence grievances remain unaddressed and fraudulent practices become normalised. Sadly, such patterns contribute to the decreasing trust in government institutions and democratic processes, though the aspiration for democracy remains strong.

The distrust of electoral institutions and results has cast a cloud on Tshisekedi’s ostensible landslide victory. A surge of fresh protests followed in Goma and other areas. M23 rebels, seeking to exploit the growing tensions, have stepped up their attacks.

While this post-election scenario was predictable, it was not inevitable. Had the required institutional reforms been undertaken in good faith, the country might have fostered greater levels of trust between the government and citizens and laid a foundation for better quality elections. As for now there is a serious crisis of legitimacy for Tshisekedi and this might escalate violent conflict in the DRC.