Voting began Wednesday in general elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
____________________________________________________________________________
General elections are expected to be held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 20 December 2023. Simultaneous elections will be held for the President, almost all of the members of the National Assembly, almost all of the elected members of the 26 provincial assemblies, and, for the first time under the new constitution, members of a limited number of commune (municipal) councils.
These elections are the first of the 4th election cycle under the 2006 constitution. Six more elections will follow in 2024, five of which are indirect.
Normal elections will not be held in the territories of Kwamouth, Masisi, and Rutshuru due to armed conflict.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has suffered from almost constant conflict in the east for the past 30 years. More recently, violence surged in the region after a new rebellion by the M23 group, supported by Rwanda, caused much of the North Kivu province to be occupied by rebels. This upsurge in violence comes as MONUSCO is expected to begin its “accelerated” withdrawal, as requested by Tshisekedi, after an almost 25-year presence in the country.
Due to this, the eastern provinces will not be able to vote normally, but if Goma were to fall as it did in 2012, the whole process would be compromised.
With the possibility of over a million voters being disenfranchised from instability, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has proposed sending a regional intervention force into eastern DRC to try to stabilize the area. The SADC Mission in the DRC was first proposed in May and was meant to go in by September but has been postponed, with its most recent summit concerning fiance.
According to the Institute for Security Studies, it’s hard to imagine the mission could go in and suppress all of eastern DRC’s many armed rebel groups in time to enfranchise those voters.
The president is elected by plurality voting in one round.
The 500 members of the National Assembly are elected by two methods. In electoral districts having been allocated only one seat, members are elected using first-past-the-post voting; while in those allocated multiple seats, the members are elected by open list proportional representation, with seats assigned using the largest remainder method. The proportional allocation of seats to electoral districts will be finalized by 15 June 2023. For the 2018 elections there were 62 single-member constituencies with the remaining 438 members elected from multi-member ones.
The provincial assembly elections also use the same two methods for electing members. For the commune councils, all members of a council are in a single multi-member district and are elected using the open list method.
Candidates
There are 26 official candidates