Content area
Full text
On 9 December 2011, incumbent president Joseph Kabila, who had run as an independent, was declared the winner of the disputed November 28 presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with 49 percent of the vote. His nearest rival, Etienne Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) placed a distant second in the official count with 32 percent. In concurrent elections for the 500-seat National Assembly, Kabila's People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) and its allies won a total of 341 seats. The PPRD won 62 seats, the most of any single party, followed by the UDPS, with 41 seats.
The 2011 elections were the second democratic polls since the official end of the country's decade-long civil war in 2003. They were the first elections of the postconflict period in which the government of the DRC, rather than the international community, drove the process, providing most of the funds and managing the technical and logistical aspects of the balloting. Thus for both the Congolese government and the international community, the stakes were high. Credible elections would demonstrate the government's capacity to marshal the political and social forces necessary to entrench peace and democracy. The elections would also show the strength of international actors' commitment to supporting democracy in the DRC after their substantial investment in peace-building.
Both the Congolese government and its international partners failed to live up to these promises and expectations. In the run-up to the elections, the Parliament pushed through ill-advised constitutional amendments and weakened political-oversight mechanisms in a clear effort to bend electoral rules in favor of Kabila. In the face of such blatant violations of democratic principles, the usually vocal corps of foreign diplomats in the capital of Kinshasa fell silent, making many Congolese wonder if, after only five years of experience with democratic government and fragile peace, the international community had turned its back on democracy for the sake of peace and stability. Ironically, a restrictive notion of stability led international actors to look the other way while the Congolese government was sowing the seeds of political instability inherent in unfair elections in fragile countries.
A Tense Interlude
By the time polling stations closed on 28 November 2011, it was clear to political...