Congo Ruling Party Rebuffs U.S. Elections Call, Backs 2019 Vote

KINSHASA (Capital Markets in Africa) – The head of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s ruling party said he supports a program under which elections will be held in April 2019 at the earliest, in an apparent rejection of a U.S. government demand that the delayed vote take place next year.

The secretary-general of the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, Henri Mova Sakanyi, told members he backs the timeline given by the electoral commission, according to a statement published Wednesday on the party’s website. He said Congo’s people should “respect those 504 days” that commission President Corneille Nangaa says are needed to organize the ballot after voter registration is finished in December.

President Joseph Kabila, who’s led Congo since 2001, was meant to step down at the end of his second term in December 2016 following an election to find his successor. That vote was delayed and Kabila continued in office, sparking protests in which dozens of people were killed by security forces.

On Dec. 31, opposition groups struck a deal with Kabila’s coalition, accepting his remaining in power if presidential and parliamentary elections were held this year. That accord suffered a blow last month when the commission gave April 2019 as the earliest possible election date.

Mova Sakanyi’s comments come after a late-October visit to Congo by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. She met Kabila and Nangaa and insisted elections should be held in 2018, saying the U.S. wouldn’t support a vote the following year.

The election commission says that financial and logistical challenges in the vast Central African country have complicated the holding of timely elections and has asked the international community for help.

On Oct. 31, the Rassemblement, the largest opposition coalition, called for Kabila to step down this year and for an overhaul of the electoral commission’s leadership, accusing it of working in the president’s interests.

Source: Bloomberg Business News