Kabila Not Standing in Congo Elections

A key aide has said Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose refusal to step down at the end of his mandate in 2016 resulted in ongoing, bloody street protests, will not stand in elections due to be held this year.
Lambert Mende, the minister of communications, said Kabila, who has been in office since 2001, had never intended to seek a third term and would not seek to appoint a candidate to represent his interests in the polls, currently scheduled for December.
“This is not a kingdom, where the king appoints an heir. It is a democratic republic,” Mende told the Guardian on Wednesday.
The protests have been led by the Catholic church. Last month Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo, the most senior church official in DRC, described the country as “an open prison”.
At least 30 people have been killed in two days of clashes between Hema herders and Lendu farmers in the north-eastern Ituri province. Aid agencies say violence in the east has forced thousands of people out of their homes and into neighbouring Burundi and Tanzania in recent weeks.
Analysts say Kabila and his close advisers may have decided to commit to elections. A new electoral law has received rapid parliamentary approval, voter registration has been completed without major disruption, and large sums have been allocated to the electoral commission.
“There is a sense that there has been a shift from a strategy of buying time to one of holding elections and making sure they turn out in [Kabila’s] favour. It’s a risk but a good strategy in some ways because holding elections is the one thing everyone can agree on, even if they are flawed,” Stearns said.
The former DRC prime minister Samy Badibanga said, “There are people dying every day. There are children dying of hunger, clinics burned down, villages destroyed. The attention is drawn to the elections … but the immediate priority is humanitarian. The crisis is being completely neglected.”
>Juthy Saha