Elections in the DRC: Bishops of CENCO in Canada to solicit technical and financial support
A strong delegation of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO), led by its president, Monsignor Marcel Utembi, archbishop of Kisangani and his vice-president, Monsignor Fridolin Ambongo, coadjutor Archbishop of Kinshasa and next successor of Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo, is presently in Canada for a week.
The mission of the Catholic Bishops of Congo to Canada will travel to Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto, primarily to advocate with government and religious authorities, the Canadian economic community and Canadian civil society committed to human rights, democracy and social justice, with a view to seeking diplomatic, technical and financial support, including Canadian expertise, to ensure the success of the electoral process in their country.
Canada’s choice for this mission of explaining the political crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on the one hand, and raising awareness among the Canadian public, on the other hand, is not fortuitous. Canada is one of the major players contributing to joint efforts at the international level to help and support this country in its democratic process.
In accordance with the Constitution of that country and the New Year’s Eve Agreement that does not allow outgoing President Joseph Kabila to stand for a third term, the Congolese people as a whole are determined to go to the elections. in December 2018 to elect a successor, despite some financial and technical challenges that remain.
And, Canadians of Congolese origin deeply believe that their country, Canada, as a country founded on strong values of rights and freedoms for all, the main ones include the rule of law, the respect of the process democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms, can play a crucial diplomatic role in helping to facilitate a first democratic alternation of power smoothly in this country.
Canada can, at one and the same time, help push the Kinshasa regime to hold credible and transparent elections, but also provide substantial technical and financial support to this country to help it on its way to holding truly free elections. fair and inclusive, to ensure a peaceful transition of power and achieve the stabilization of this country which has suffered greatly from the horrors of war.
Genesis of the Congolese political crisis
The DRC is currently experiencing the most serious political and constitutional crisis in its history. From the President of the Republic to the Provincial Governors, through the Senators, the National and Provincial Members, all the elected representatives and leaders of the country’s political institutions are out of office, which has created a serious crisis of unprecedented democratic legitimacy.
An unprecedented situation, in this 21st century, which leads dangerously to arbitrariness, to the authoritarian drift of the regime and which results in bad governance which aggravates further the socio-economic crisis and the continuous deterioration of the living conditions of the population .
The current situation of widespread political instability afflicting the DRC is mainly due to the lack of organization of the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for December 2016.
Faced with the obvious that the elections could not be held on the date stipulated by the Constitution, the Congolese political and social forces, of all tendencies, had unanimously agreed to meet at a negotiating table with the help from the local Catholic Church to find a suitable solution to overcome this crisis of legitimacy.
The political negotiations initiated, mediated by the Catholic clergy, helped to reduce the political tension prevailing at that time in Congo and to avoid the total chaos that could have occurred at the end of the second and last mandate of the President Joseph Kabila, December 19, 2016.
At the end of these negotiations, the political class and the civil society reached a political compromise of way out of crisis. They signed a political agreement on December 31, 2016, commonly known as the “New Year’s Eve Accord”. In that agreement, it was decided that the government and the opposition agree to form a transitional government with the aim of holding presidential and parliamentary elections by December 2017 and to ensure the transparency of the electoral process. It is this political agreement that allowed Joseph Kabila to remain in power beyond the end of his constitutional mandate.
But that was not counting with the dark maneuvers of the Congolese political actors that translate into the lack of
