By Adrien Seyes- December 26, 2023
Barring an unlikely surprise, Félix Tshisekedi should be declared the clear winner of the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A “victory” obtained in defiance of the vote of the Congolese which will not be taken into account as in 2018. The only difference compared to five years ago: the method used. Here is how the presidential camp, largely behind in the polls, went about it this time to claim victory.
“Three things cannot remain hidden for long: the sun, the moon and the truth.” This aphorism attributed to Buddha is often repeated on social networks in the DRC, a country where the gap between the official truth, trumpeted by the authorities, and reality is often gigantic.
The results of the December 2023 general elections that the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) is preparing to make public will, in all likelihood, not escape this rule. This time again, Félix Tshisekedi should not need the votes of the Congolese to be declared the winner of the presidential election.
Already in 2018, the current head of state had not won the election. It was Martin Fayulu who won with more than 62% of the votes, according to figures released by the CENCO-ECC electoral observation mission.
From this point of view, 2023 is likely to be a repeat of 2018. According to the most reliable data collected to date, it is the opponent Moïse Katumbi who would have largely won this presidential election with a result which would oscillate between 63 and 68% of the votes. Félix Tshisekedi would not have managed to exceed the 20% mark.
Like five years ago, by the prince’s actions, the loser should therefore be declared the winner. The difference compared to five years ago lies in the method used.
Pre-programmed voting machines…
In 2018, the fraud took place a posteriori , after the Congolese vote. Concretely, the ballot boxes had been “stuffed” at the time of the centralization of votes in Kinshasa, which had nevertheless allowed the CENCO and the ECC (respectively, the Catholic and Protestant Church) to collect the “real” minutes released at the polls and obtain a credible consolidated result on a national scale.
It is this obstacle that those in power have sought at all costs to circumvent. The CENCO-ECC joint mission being considered – both in the DRC and outside – as the true justice of the peace in these elections, it was important to neutralize it. How ? By fraud not a posteriori as in 2018, but a priori thanks to the use on a very large scale of pre-programmed voting machines. This is clearly indicated by two particularly well-informed pre-reports, submitted to several diplomatic services.
Concretely, these voting machines were not free of data when they were installed in the polling stations. They should, in theory, have been reset before the vote. But that wasn’t the case. These machines therefore already included a substantial number of votes in favor of the USN candidates. The two preliminary reports put forward the stratospheric figure of… 70%. Which means that these machines were pre-programmed to automatically allocate 70% of the votes cast to the presidential majority candidates. The rest, 30%, was distributed among all the candidates, in accordance with the reality of the vote. Which means that, during the various elections, the USN candidates immediately benefited from 70% of the votes, then a fraction of 30% (which actually corresponds to their results obtained at the polls).
This is how the CENI comes, in the provisional results, to announce Soviet-style figures in favor of Félix Tshisekedi and his political family without worrying about their realistic nature. “In the DRC, voting is still largely sociological, regional. Not everything is consistent. There are strong disparities from one territory to another. How, in these conditions, can we explain, for example, that in Beni territory and in Beni town Félix Tshisekedi in the east, a Kasaïan, records a score of 91%, even though he failed in the war against the M23 . It’s simply impossible ,” explains an academic in Belgium. “The same reasoning can be made across all of North Kivu and everywhere in the east. But also to the west. In Kwilu and Bandundu, Mr. Tshisekedi, whose natural electoral base is in the center of the country, is rewarded with enormous scores, of the order of 89% to 90%, even though these are territories sociologically favorable to Martin. Fayulu or Adolphe Muzito. Here too, it’s simply not realistic,” he notes. Incidentally, this professor emphasizes that, “in all cases, in the east as in the west, according to these official figures, Moïse Katumbi comes second behind Félix Tshisekedi, which means that, in fact, he probably won everywhere and hands down this presidential election.”
… to bypass CENCO and ECC
After having pre-programmed the voting machines, all that remained then, to try to make the trick presentable, was to ensure a low participation rate, which the authorities employed by various means ( delay, postponement, cancellation, etc.). And with success: this rate should not, in reality, exceed 30-35%.
In the end, the stratagem, used on an industrial scale, explains that, in certain polling stations where effective participation was high, the participation rate displayed on the minutes largely exceeds 100%… But it doesn’t matter, for those in power, the method used has an enormous advantage: that of making it impossible for the CENCO-ECC joint observation mission to collect non-polluted minutes from polling stations by polling station and, consequently, making it impossible formal, unlike 2018, to designate the real winner of this election.
It is in this light that we must understand the remarks this Monday, December 24 of Cardinal Ambongo, the Archbishop of Kinshasa who spoke of “a gigantic disorder… organized, planned ” before, perhaps, saying more. Like the sun through the clouds, the truth always shines through.
