Kabila Has Little to Fear From DRC Opposition

Eugène Bakama Bope
Congo analyst

In Africa, it is rare to see a ruling politician organise an election and lose.

Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Congo-Brazzaville’s Denis Sassou, Cameroon’s Paul Biya, Zimbabwe’s Robert Magabe,  Burkinafaso ‘s Blaise Compaore, Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni – all are long-serving African leaders, who have either managed to chalk up huge electoral successes or simply cling on to power by brute force.

It now looks like that the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, will go the same way when the Congolese vote in  presidential and parliamentary elections later this year – unless the opposition parties can put together a credible alternative to incumbent president Joseph Kabila.

By the time of the elections, Kabila will have been in power almost 11 years, but he will still have only held office for a single term.

This is because he inherited the presidency from his father, Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated by his own bodyguards at the beginning of 2001. He has only had to contest one previous election, in 2006, which he won with a landslide in the east of the country but lost in some key areas, including Kinshasa, Bas-Congo and Equator Provence.

Under the Congolese electoral system, a president may only serve a maximum of two five-year terms in office, so, should he win the forthcoming election, Kabila’s next term will be his last.

Even so, in this scenario, by the time Kabila exits office he will have governed the country for 16 years – an aberration in any democratic state.

Kabila is determined to win a second term, but is conscious that popular sentiment against his regime could still derail his election effort.

The Congolese people are likely to judge him on two important criteria, both of which were promises that he made during the last election.

The cornerstone of Kabila’s election bid was social and economic reconstruction of the country, after years of brutal war. He said that, under his leadership, all the Congolese would become more prosperous.

On the back of this declaration, Kabila launched an initiative, known as the Cinq Chantiers (Five Yards), which pledged to give priority to infrastructure, health and education, water and electricity, housing and employment.

While there have a few concrete accomplishments in Kinshasa – a new hospital has opened in the Centenaire quarter of the city, and dozens of new roads have been built – outside of the capital ordinary citizens are finding it hard to see how they are now better off.

This is why Kabila has recently been showing signs of accelerating the implementation of his economic redevelopment programme.

In particular, we have seen a flurry of contracts exchanged between the DRC and Chinese companies, in the hope that fresh investment from the Orient will help throw off mounting criticism about his famous Five Yards.

The other important election pledge that Kabila made in 2006 was to bring peace to the whole of the DRC – something that was a particular concern in the east of the country, which has endured years of war and where thuggish militia groups still roam a large part of the region.

With serial rape an ongoing problem in eastern DRC, and 1.5 million displaced people facing chronic insecurity (according to the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees), many local residents are beginning to doubt Kabila’s commitment to the region.

To deflect some of this criticism, Kabila visited the area before Christmas, in an attempt to show to the people there that he is taking their suffering seriously, and to condemn the rapes that continue to be committed by militias operating there.

Whether such last-minute gestures can heal the wounds of the past, and persuade the Congolese people to vote for him again, remains to be seen.

But the signs are that, unless the opposition pull together and deliver a credible alternative to what Kabila is offering, the incumbent president will be returned to office without too much difficulty.

For now, the opposition remains highly fragmented. There has been talk of formulating a single strategy to contest the elections, and rallying around a single leader, but squabbling between the different parties has made consensus impossible.

Out of the various opposition movements that could contest the election, three in particular stand out.

The Movement for the Liberation of Congo, MLC, which draws much of its support from the west of the country, was Kabila’s biggest threat in the last election.

However, its leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba, is being tried in The Hague for alleged war crimes and is in no position to provide visionary leadership for the party, although he still commands a great deal of support in key areas. It is not yet clear who might lead the party instead of him and, until a strong leader emerges, the MLC is going to remain a weak contender.

Another viable opposition party is the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, UPDS. The party boycotted the last election amid claims that the government was manipulating the poll, but says that it will stand in the forthcoming ballot.

At the head of the party is Etienne Tshisekedi, an ageing but well-respected politician from the Mobutu Sese Seko era. Some claim that the 78-year-old will not be able to muster the energy and determination to mount a serious challenge, and there have even been attempts to bar him from running by limiting the age of candidates to 70. Nonetheless, many commentators have suggested that Tshisekedi may be the most popular politician in the country – embodying hope for the future, and speaking out against corruption.

There is also a new wave of political forces emerging in the country, such as the Union for the Congolese Nation, UNC, a break-away faction of the ruling People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, PPRD.

At the head of the UNC is Vital Kamerhe, who led the last election campaign under Kabila. His close association with the president means that he knows his strengths and weaknesses very well. But he lacks a broad base of support in the country and some say that he is not enough of a heavyweight to inflict any real damage on Kabila.

Together, these three parties command broad support in the country. But, if they speak with separate voices, they are not going to be heard.

To have any chance of winning in the next election, the opposition parties must come together as one, behind a single strong candidate for the presidency.

But, in an opposition movement accustomed to divisions and conflict, this will not be easy to achieve.

Right now, the opposition may appear to offer little real competition for the presidency, but Kabila is taking not chances. Recently, Kabila supporters have been pushing to reduce the elections to a single round of voting, instead of the normal two.

Lambert Mende, a government spokesman, estimates that having a single round will save the heavily-indebted country around 350 million US dollars. However, opponents of the move say that having a single round will improve Kabila’s chances of victory, particularly if the opposition remains divided.

Eugène Bakama Bope, president of the Friends of the Law in the Congo, is IWPR’s Congo analyst.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of IWPR.