DR Congo gears up for December polls; what you need to know

The DR Congo's ruling party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) confirmed Félix Tshisekedi's candidacy for the December 20 presidential election at an extraordinary congress in Kinshasa on Saturday, September 30. ALSO READ: Regional army chiefs to discuss interventions after fighting resumes in eastern DR Congo Besides the incumbent, a couple of other candidates haveconfirmed they will run for the presidency. More are expected to join the race before the October 8 registration deadline. In 2018, 21 candidates applied for the presidency. ALSO READ: Fighting resumes in eastern DR Congo; what’s at stake? Who are the other candidates? The race currently has a few candidates including President Tshisekedi who is seeking a second term. The 60-year-old has been in office since January 2019 when he took over from Joseph Kabila. Martin Fayulu In the polls, Tshisekedi will be up against competition from key political figures including Martin Fayulu, 66, the opposition leader who came second to Tshisekedi in the contentious 2018 poll. Fayulu, the leading opposition candidate, is a former manager at ExxonMobil Corporation, an American multinational oil and gas corporation. Earlier, Fayulu who lost to Tshisekedi in 2019 threatened to boycott the December 20 election in protest at alleged fraud linked to the voter list but he changed his mind saying the former decision would have played into his opponents' hands. “We will continue to fight for transparency in the elections, and if we don’t have transparency in the electoral register, we will have it in the monitoring of the elections,” said Fayulu whose party, the Engagement for Citizenship and Development party, is pushing for election results to be announced by polling station. In the 2018 poll, pre-election polls predicted Fayulu would win by a landslide. Dr Denis Mukwege On Monday, October 2, gynecologist Denis Mukwege also declared himself a candidate in the presidential election, ending speculation about whether he would enter politics. ALSO READ: Double genocide conspiracy in the DRC: Why has Dr. Denis Mukwege gone quiet? The 68-year-old who often mocked the government for its involvement with foreign missions, including the much-maligned UN peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) and, the East African Community Regional Force (EACRF), made the announcement before a crowd of supporters in the capital, Kinshasa. Mukwege has no political party. Moise Katumbi Opposition leader Moise Katumbi also filed his candidacy to run for president, on Wednesday, October 4. In a statement, Katumbi, a millionaire businessman and former governor of the copper-rich Katanga region, said: Our country is condemned neither to war, nor to insecurity, nor to bad governance, nor to repeated violations of the rule of law and freedoms. Katumbi’s Ensemble pour la Republique party indicated that it will reveal a programme to restore security, create jobs and improve social services. Katumbi was barred from returning to the country to take part in the last election in 2018. He returned home, from Belgium, in 2019 after his fraud conviction was overturned and he was pardoned as Tshisekedi then signalled a new era of political openness. Katumbi backed Tshisekedi’s presidency before 2022 when they fell out. 2. Political instability persists As the polls get closer, political tensions persist in the country, with several opposition candidates complaining of delays and issues with the electoral process which they claim disadvantage them. Chiefs of defence staff from a four-bloc mechanism for DR Congo are expected to meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Friday, October 6, under the auspices of the African Union (AU) to map out the harmonisation of existing and planned troop deployments to the country’s troubled east. In May, security forces fired tear gas and fought running battles in the streets with anti-government protesters demonstrating over alleged irregularities in voter registration. Fayulu then said his party would not participate in upcoming elections if the voter list is not redone and audited, claiming fraud. “Everyone knows that the voter identification and registration process in which we participated took place in total opacity, a proof of the planning and execution of fraud,” Fayulu said at a news conference in Kinshasa in June. At least 50 people were killed in a crackdown by DR Congo armed forces on a protest that targeted the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) in the country’s eastern city of Goma, on August 30. The spokesman for Katumbi's party, Cherubin Okende, was killed in July. Ensemble pour la Republique denounced a dramatic context of repression, citing Okende's assassination and a crackdown on opposition protests in September. ALSO READ: DR Congo army kill dozens amid anti-UN protests On Sunday, October 1, fighting erupted in eastern DR Congo’s North Kivu province between the country’s armed forces (FARDC) and the M23 rebel group. In statements, the warring parties which had observed a fragile ceasefire since November 2022, accused each other of starting the fire exchange on Sunday afternoon in Kilolirwe and other areas in Masisi territory in spite of calls by regional leaders to end the conflict peacefully. The spokesperson of North Kivu Governor’s office, Lt Gen Guillaume Ndjike, accused the rebels of seeking to reoccupy positions they earlier vacated as part of the ceasefire. But M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka said that with the attack, the Congolese government “initiated its warmongering plan” declared by Tshisekedi in his speech at the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September in which he ruled out any possibility of peace talks with the rebels he calls terrorists. 3. Criticism of law that allegedly targets Katumbi One of the topics that are interesting in the build-up to the elections is a draft law limiting presidential eligibility. The legislation dubbed the “Tshiani Law”, after its author Noël Tshiani, a 65-year-old economist, who worked at the World Bank has been criticized as a tool to ring-fence Tshisekedi’s second term ahead of the elections. ALSO READ: DR Congo's nationality draft law seen as targeting Moïse Katumbi One of the provisions of the Bill is that only Congolese born of a Congolese father and mother may be appointed to positions of sovereignty or as state officers, including the president, prime minister, in the courts and tribunals, the ministries of finance, defence, and security. Majority MP Pitshou Nsingi Pululu, who is pushing the draft, said: “We want to lock around 250 posts that we consider to be part of our country's sovereignty.” It has fuelled suspicion that it is targeting Moise Katumbi, a Congolese politician born to a Congolese mother and a Jewish father.

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DR Congo gears up for December polls; what you need to know