Pragmatists versus romantics in DRC election rumble
Recriminations are flying around in Washington over the Trump administration’s response to the barefaced theft of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) presidential election. As so often, the romantics are denouncing the pragmatists — with the former doing most of the talking, both on and off the record.
Romantic officials who lost the internal debate spilled their hearts anonymously to Foreign Policy to protest against the state department’s January 23 statement that “the US welcomes the Congolese Constitutional Court’s certification of Felix Tshisekedi as the next president” of the African country.
They had endorsed a different, welcome-less draft that spoke of a “deeply flawed and troubling election” and reiterated earlier vows to “hold accountable those who … undermine democratic processes”. Said one romantic, as quoted by Foreign Policy: “If we said we’ll hold the government accountable … and five days later we congratulate a bunch of thieves, what good are our threats?”
Riva Levinson, a one-time lobbyist for Jonas Savimbi who earned redemption helping Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf into power, wrote in The Hill that she was asking herself the same question as she headed to Nigeria to observe Sunday’s election. And then there was a post on a council of foreign relations blog by Michelle Gavin, former ambassador to Botswana and Africa director on president Barrack Obama ’ s national security council. The headline was: “The Truth About US Complicity in DRC’s Fraudulent Election”.
“The Congolese people who bravely came out to vote were treated like unwitting extras in a drama staged by elites … There are plenty of forces around the world working to devalue the meaning of ideas like democracy or even truth. The US ought not to join them.”
For a more phlegmatic view I turned to the Tiresias of US Africa policy, Hank Cohen, president George Bush’s assistant secretary of state for Africa and author of The Mind of the African Strongman — Conversations with Dictators, Statesman and Father Figures ,a wry, wise and highly readable assessment of the many Big Men he dealt with during and after a 38-year career as a state department Africanist.
Cohen’s DRC experience goes back to the early days of Mobutu Sese Seko’s presidency. He said everyone took it as a given that Mobutu’s latest incarnation, Joseph Kabila, having run out of other options for retaining power, would try to rig the election in favour of Ramazani Shadary, a puppet.
Kabila was never going to let Martin Fayulu win, because he knew Fayulu, the stand-in for his arch enemy, Moise Katumbi, would go after him and his illgotten gains. “Kabila really robbed the Congo blind during his 16 years in power.”
In the event Shadary, “never a heavy hitter in politics”, did so poorly there was no way he could be declared the winner. That left Kabila no choice but to throw the election to Tshisekedi. “He had a discussion with Felix, who promised to leave him alone, forget the past and focus on the future.”
The Catholic Church’s vote count, corroborated by the count leaked from the electoral commission, complicated things, but once the packed constitutional court had “validated” the rigged numbers and the AU and Southern African Development Community had backed away from their demand for a recount, Donald Trump’s national security council “decided that the main objective had been accomplished”. The predatory Kabila was out and voted his surrogate for and wasn’t they didn in.’That t seem is what the majority of Congolese too outraged by the fix.
In a direct riposte to Gavin, posted on the same council on foreign relations blog, Cohen said her “severe condemnation” of the US decision “emphasises useless idealism at the expense of pragmatic progress in the right direction.
“I am surprised she is insisting on the perfect at the expense of the good. That does a great disservice to diplomacy.”