Data picture: On December 30, 2018, in Congo (Golden) Sakai, voters lined up at a polling station to prepare for voting. (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency /French News)
The presidential election of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was held for nearly two years, has caused another trouble.
On January 6, local time, the Central Election Commission of the Democratic Republic of Congo (CENI) announced that due to the slow progress of the vote counting work, the announcement of the results of the presidential election held on December 30, 2018 will be postponed.
According to the BBC report, Election Commission Chairman Na'anga said that as of the 6th, only 53% of the votes completed the counting work, and the Election Commission had to postpone the announcement of the preliminary results of the presidential election. Earlier, the Election Committee issued an announcement stating that the preliminary results should be announced on January 6, the final results will be announced on January 15, and the president-elect will be sworn in on January 18.
Congo, the second largest African country, has never had a precedent for achieving a peaceful power transition since its independence in 1960. Any turmoil will aggravate the outside world's concerns about the security situation in the Congo (DRC). Recently, the Chinese ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo issued a security warning, reminding Chinese citizens to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo in the near future, and local Chinese citizens should strengthen security precautions and make emergency preparations for emergencies.
The election has been delayed again and again
This is an election that was delayed for nearly two years before it was held. The term of office of the current President of the Congo, Joseph Kabila, was supposed to end in December 2016, but the Congolese government has been delaying the election that should have been held in September of that year for various reasons.
The government's actions aroused extreme dissatisfaction among the opposition in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then triggered bloody conflicts. On December 31, 2016, under the mediation of United Nations and other international organizations, the various factions of the Congo (DRC) signed the "Comprehensive and Inclusive Political Agreement" to strive to hold presidential elections and national and provincial legislative elections before December 2017, thereby achieving a peaceful transfer of power.
However, due to the lack of progress in dialogue between the parties on how to implement the agreement, the election originally scheduled to be held in December 2017 was finally dragged down. After a series of accidents including fire in the warehouse storing election equipment and materials, the crash of an aircraft transporting election materials, the presidential election was finally officially held on December 30, 2018.
The chaos of political situation
However, the Election Commission refused to announce the election results on time, which made the originally relaxed nerves of the outside world tense up.
The outside world's concerns about the political situation in the Congo (DRC) are not unreasonable. In fact, since this former Belgian colony became independent in 1960, assassination, mutiny, and bloody conflict have always been with the election.
1961, the first Prime Minister of the Congo (District) Lumumba was assassinated; then in 1965, the then commander-in-chief of the army, launched a coup to power; in 1997, Mobuto, who had been in power for 32 years, was overthrown by the army led by Laurent Kabila, the father of the current president, and in 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated by her personal bodyguard. The current President Kabila has always been unwilling to give up his re-election campaign, which is largely due to concerns about his own safety.
This state of the central government has also weakened its control over the country. In fact, many parts of the Congo (DRC) are in a high state of autonomy due to the out-of-reach central government, and rebellions and struggles continue. On the other hand, more than 250 ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo have not formed a unified national consciousness and are still in a state of "with society but no country". According to media statistics, has now more than 400 recognized political parties in the Congo (DPRK), most of which are regional and national parties. A loose situation in the political arena cannot form a political party with national influence, and it is not conducive to the formation of challenging opposition parties. Therefore, in the past few elections, the ruling party with ruling resources can always win easily.
At present, the outside world's concerns about the announcement of the results of the election may trigger violent conflicts, and are further escalating.On the 4th, US President Trump announced that he would send 80 US soldiers to Gabon Republic near the Congo (DPRK) to deal with possible violent conflicts in the Congo (DPRK).
The election "curse" that cannot be escaped
Accompanied by endless conflicts and turmoil, the development path of the Congo (DRC) is full of ups and downs. Why did this second largest African country, which originally had rich resources, defeat a good hand and become a typical poor African country suffering from the "resource curse"? Yuan Ding, a lecturer at Shanghai Normal University, analyzed that there are many tribes in the Congo (District of China) and are closely related to its neighboring countries. Both its domestic and international interests are very complex. The rich mineral resources such as uranium, cobalt, diamond, radium, copper, tin, manganese, etc. make the Democratic Republic of Congo have important economic and military value. The infiltration of former European colonial countries and the United States into the local political and economic fields has made the already complex domestic situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo even worse. has a long-term lack of a stable development environment, which has greatly restricted the economic and social development of the Congo (DRC), and the people's satisfaction with the government is not high. With the addition of these many factors, the political situation in the Congo (DRC) has been unstable for a long time, and "chaos whenever you choose" has become an unavoidable nightmare.
Behind the "curse" of the election, there are more important African development issues worth pondering. The election chaos that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is experiencing has actually been frequently staged in many African countries. Similar to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in many African countries, tribal (or ethnic) identity is beyond national identity, and voters consider more about ethnic interests than the significance of candidate policies to the country when voting. Under the Western "democratic election" mechanism of one person, one vote, the easier it is for ethnic groups to gain power, and it is easy to form a "winner-takes-all" situation, which in turn solidifies the original political pattern.
At the same time, the lack and opacity of the election supervision mechanism, coupled with the backwardness of the election infrastructure, has made the ruling party and the opposition lack mutual trust. Since the election results are related to the interests of the ruling party, once the opposition loses the election, it often means that it will be in a situation of "loss all" before the next election. Therefore, the failure is usually attributed to the ruling party using the ruling resources to manipulate the election, and then call on supporters to protest and trigger conflict.
How to break the election "curse" and find a development path that conforms to its own national conditions is a major issue that needs to be solved urgently for African countries that are on the rise. (Overseas Network Commentator Nie Shuyi)
Editor: Yao Ling, Niu Ning
