Congo’s Kabila chases an unconstitutional, unpopular re-election

LAST month residents of Binza Delvaux, a neighbourhood of Kinshasa, the lively capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, awoke to discover a huge poster in the local market. It showed Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila, with the caption “Our Candidate”. Around the same time, crude advertisements started appearing on television stations praising the “indispensable” Mr Kabila. In cities across the country, T-shirts bearing the president’s face have been handed out at free concerts put on by his party, the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD).

Congo, a dysfunctional, vast country of perhaps 80m people, is catching election fever. This is odd. According to Congo’s constitution Mr Kabila, who has been president since the murder of his father in 2001, is barred from running for a third term and ought to have stepped down in 2016. Instead, he chose simply to stay in office. After two years of “glissement” (sliding) he seems to have decided to hold elections—and run in them—whatever the constitution says. A vote is scheduled for December 23rd. It is unlikely to be free, fair or even peaceful, but it may at least take place. “Everything is going well,” says Corneille Nangaa, the head of the electoral commission, who has been buzzing around European capitals and Washington, DC to persuade doubters.

The reason Mr Kabila has relented and now wants to hold elections is that he may have found a way to make himself a candidate. To be sure, he has not yet explicitly said he will run. Patrick Nkanga, the nattily dressed spokesman of the PPRD, says that the posters and advertisements trumpeting Mr Kabila do not necessarily mean that the president will stand again. They are merely expressions of the “free speech” of enthusiastic supporters, he insists with an admirably straight face. But he does not rule out the possibility. “You cannot deny he has a certain experience in running the country,” Mr Nkanga says.

The path towards a third term involves fiddling with the constitutional court, which ruled in 2016 that Mr Kabila could stay in office while waiting for elections to be organised. Over the past few months, several judges have retired (how willingly is unclear) giving Mr Kabila the chance to appoint new ones. Many Congolese politicians fret that the court could soon rule that, since the constitution was amended in 2011, the count should be restarted. That could potentially give Mr Kabila another term. A similar gambit was used by the president of neighbouring Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, in 2015.

Mr Kabilia may, however, face an unexpected opponent. On June 8th the International Criminal Court (ICC) acquitted Jean-Pierre Bemba, a warlord who has spent the past ten years in prison in The Hague. Mr Bemba (pictured) had been convicted of crimes against humanity in 2016, but on appeal the court overturned the verdict on the basis that he could not be held wholly responsible for the rapes and massacres his troops committed. In 2006 he came second to Mr Kabila in Congo’s first election in almost half a century. His return could be seismic. Kris Berwouts, the author of “Congo’s Violent Peace”, says that Mr Bemba has “the aura of an anti-Kabila icon”. More than most, he can get his supporters to protest on the streets.

If Mr Kabila runs, can he win? The president is fiercely unpopular. In most of Congo it is near impossible to find anyone who will say a good word about him. Polling by the Congo Research Group at New York University shows that only 17% of the population would vote for the ruling party (which is not yet entirely united behind its leader). But the election could be rigged or bought. The leading opposition candidate, Moïse Katumbi, a wealthy former governor and one-time ally of Mr Kabila, held a huge rally in Kinshasa on June 9th. Mr Katumbi, in exile since 2016, appeared by video link. Whether he teams up with Mr Bemba is far from clear. By excluding candidates and dividing the opposition, Mr Kabila could sneak through under the first-past-the-post system without having to steal too many votes.

If he did so, most Western diplomats would accept his victory. They value stability above all. Most Congolese, however, would not be thrilled by the prospect of more of the same. Some 13m people require urgent humanitarian assistance, according to the UN. In a country of lush, fertile forests, over 2m children are close to starving. A third term for a useless president would not help it change course.