The opposition Ensemble pour la République (Together for the Republic) have announced they will fight until their last drop of blood for a credible election and will not boycott the December 20, 2023 polls to give President Félix Tshisekedi a free pass into a second term.
This follows the announcement by opposition ECIDE leader Martin Fayulu that his party will not field candidates in the national and provincial deputies contest as the electoral process was marred with irregularities that the Tshisekedi regime had paid a blind eye to.
Ensemble party spokesperson Olivier Kamitatu says the party led by popular leader and former Katanga governor, Moise Katumbi, will go all the way to the polls.
“To the cheaters and fraudsters, we will not give in on anything! We are not naive. We will face them head on! Ensemble allies will submit lists of candidates at all levels. We will go upto the end with this process. We will fight for elections whicb are democratic and inclusive. We will win,” Kamitatu said on twitter yesterday.
Fayulu’s withdrawal has shaken Tshisekedi government which is trying to please its international partners that it had organized a decent election.
According to Aljazeera, Fayulu announced yesterday his party would not participate in the upcoming elections if the voter list is not redone and audited as it smacks of fraud.
Fayulu, leader of the Engagement for Citizenship and Development (ECIDE) party, came in second to President Felix Tshisekedi in the last election in 2018. His party said he won, and he unsuccessfully challenged the results in court.
Parallel Voter Tabulation (PVT) shows that Fayulu won by over 60% but Tshisekedi was announced winner after negotiating a pact which has since broken down with former president Joseph Kabila.
Millions of Congolese will go to the polls for legislative and presidential elections on December 20. Tshisekedi is expected to seek a second term.
“Everyone knows that the voter identification and registration process in which we participated took place in total opacity, a proof of the planning and execution of fraud,” Fayulu said at a news conference in Kinshasa on Monday.
“We have decided not to submit the candidacies of our members at all levels of elections as long as the electoral list is not redone transparently and audited by an external firm,” he said.
Congo’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), hired five international experts in May to review its electoral list, and they declared it reliable.
But the United States, the European Union and other Western powers said in a joint statement that the audit had not “fostered the public perception of independent and transparent oversight” and was a missed opportunity to build confidence.
The lead-up to the polls has been tense already with several opposition candidates complaining of delays and issues with the electoral process that they say disadvantage them.
Security forces fired tear gas and fought running battles in the streets when anti-government protesters demonstrated last month against alleged irregularities in voter registrations.
Conflict in the DRC’s volatile east presented obstacles to registration in those areas.
Elections may be difficult to hold in the region, where more than 120 rebel groups have been active for years. One, the M23 has displaced hundreds of thousands of people within the past two years.
CREDIT: Additional reporting by Aljazeera
