Long-awaited election results in the second round of voting in presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), announced on Wednesday, put an end to weeks of speculation, with incumbent President Joseph Kabila emerging as the winner, having garnered 58% of the vote. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) indicated that rival presidential candidate and Vice- President Jean-Pierre Bemba won 42% of the vote.
Kabila’s victory, which has been widely expected since the start of the presidential race, met with mixed reactions across the country. In eastern DRC his win was celebrated by a population that sees in him the hero who ended the war and the five-year occupation by Rwandan and Ugandan forces.
In Kinshasa, however, the mood was tense, with most residents choosing to stay at home behind locked doors for fear of a renewed outbreak of violence. Last Saturday, as interim results indicated that Kabila had a clear lead over Bemba, rival troops clashed in the centre of the capital, near Bemba’s residence. When results of the first round of elections were announced in August, fighting provoked by Kabila’s troops paralysed the city for three days, killing 20 people.
The tense mood is likely to prevail for the next few days as everyone waits for Bemba to react to his defeat. Earlier this week, Bemba’s alliance, the Union for the Nation, declared that it would not accept the decision because it believed that there had been widespread fraud, an accusation rejected by the IEC and by senior officials of the United Nations mission in the DRC (Monuc).
The Union for the Nation, which said it had calculated that Bemba won 52,5% of the vote, also said that it would not respect a recently signed agreement with Kabila in which it committed itself to using only legal channels to contest the outcome. This position was reiterated after the official announcement was made on Wednesday night.
This does not bode well. This week, several attempts by the Congolese army and Monuc troops to disarm Bemba’s forces and move them out of Kinshasa failed, and there are still an estimated 1 000 armed men loyal to him in the centre of the city whose residents voted overwhelmingly in his favour.
Bemba has not said exactly what it is he wants, however it is unlikely that he will accept defeat graciously. Kabila and Bemba, whose relationship has always been stormy, and who come from vastly different backgrounds, have met several times over the past month. Prodded by the diplomatic community, which does not want to see the results of its labours and its extensive financial investment in the electoral process undermined at the final stage of the transition, these meetings were intended to find a compromise that would deter Bemba from launching an armed opposition to a Kabila victory.
Although there has been some suggestion that Kabila may have gone so far as to offer Bemba the post of prime minister, and that he turned it down, it is unclear how this would work. Kabila has an official agreement with his strongest alliance partner, Antoine Gizenga, the leader of the Parti Lumumbiste Unifie (Palu), that Gizenga will choose the prime minister. Since that alliance is largely one of opportunism over ideology, it is hard to believe that Gizenga would cede this chance to play a major role in national politics.
Depending on how generous Kabila is feeling after his victory, he may decide to offer Bemba certain key ministries, however this is unlikely to appease Bemba’s thirst for power. How far he is willing to go to pursue his desire for the presidency will depend on how much backing he still has. Bemba is popular in Kinshasa and in the western provinces, where he won most of his support, but the Congolese are tired of war and there is little chance that he will be able to create popular momentum to support yet another armed challenge to power.
However, Bemba may be able to convince the population that his accusations of fraud are real, and this would greatly undermine the credibility of the new Kabila government as well as its ability to govern the country. This week the powerful voice of the country’s Catholic Church added its weight to allegations of fraud, with its leader, Cardinal Frederic Etsou denouncing what he said were manipulations of the election results.