Written by Damina Advisors Wednesday, 21 December 2011 17:41
DR Congo: Major minerals exporter careens towards violent political confrontation as defeated opposition leader moves to also take office
President Joseph Kabila DR Congo, one of Africa’s largest and most geographically important countries and a top mineral producer is hurdling towards a violent political confrontation between controversially reelected incumbent Joseph Kabila and veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi. Both Kabila and Tshisekedi claim to have won the country’s recent presidential polls, though Kabila’s more legitimate claims are backed up by the UN supervised national electoral commission and were later validated by the country’s Supreme Court. Tshisekedi’s claim that the elections were rigged and did not live up to basic standards is backed up by the US Carter Center and other independent foreign election monitors. While Kabila has so far eschewed a face-to-face confrontation with Tshisekedi, Kabila, is likely to order Tshisekedi to be placed under house arrest by Friday December 23, the day on which Tshisekedi plan to swear himself in as president. Kabila who won 49% of the vote in the country’s recent presidential poll to Tshisekedi’s 32% may also see a potential breakdown of discipline within the under resourced and often mutinous national army. Tshisekedi, who has strong links to some of the senior officers of the dilapidated Congolese army may be pushing a confrontation strategy that could trigger a mutiny or a coup. Kabila’s elite Angolan-trained presidential guards could possibly get into a face-off against the regular army. Eventually foreign diplomats may have to goad Kabila and Tshisekedi into some political accommodation, where Tshisekedi and his top lieutenants are given several high profile government appointments. While a full scale re-ignition of a civil conflict is currently hard to imagine, Tshisekedi challenge may be more potent because of the likely ambivalent position of the UN and other major global powers, in light of the large amount of documented electoral irregularities observed by the independent foreign observers. Over the past 20 years Congo has endured two civil wars, one which almost became Africa’s first international war involving almost a half dozen surrounding states.
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