General elections were held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 20 December 2023. Combined elections were held for the President, 484 of the 500 members of the National Assembly, 700 of the 716 elected members of the 26 provincial assemblies, and for the first time under the new constitution, 951 members of a scaled down number of commune (municipal) councils. On election day, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), in violation of electoral law, extended voting to 21 December for polling stations that had not opened on 20 December. Some polling stations stayed open on their own accord for up to six extra days.
The election saw President Félix Tshisekedi win in a landslide victory with 73% of the vote, far ahead of his closest rival, former Katanga Province Governor Moïse Katumbi, who only won 18%, mostly from Katanga region. In the parliamentary election, while Tshisekedi's party only won 69 of the seats, his governing coalition, the Sacred Union of the Nation (USN), won nearly 450, more than 90% of the seats in the National Assembly. As Tshisekedi is dependent on his coalition, he had to compete for other key offices for his party through complex, time consuming negotiations, taking five months to form a government.
Preparations for the election were marred by significant shortcomings, including the distribution of poorly printed voter cards, many of which had become unreadable by the time of the election as they were issued earlier in the year. Voting was further disrupted by missing voter lists and other essential paperwork, broken or absent machinery, delayed openings of polling stations, and intimidation by security forces or individuals acting on behalf of candidates. These widespread issues contributed to the lowest voter turnout ever recorded, potentially disenfranchising millions of voters.
The election, while not excluding any candidate from running and being comparatively peaceful relative to previous elections, had extensive fraud. A domestic observation mission led jointly by the Catholic and various Protestant churches stated that "numerous irregularities affected the integrity of the results of all the polls in some places," such as reports of candidates acquiring voting machines and placing them in their private residences. The opposition called for a rerun of the presidential election but did not take their case to the Constitutional Court, which they see as lacking independence, instead urging street protests that failed to gain momentum. Riots did break out in Katanga over the parliamentary election, as USN members, sometimes fielding no-name candidates, had performed well compared to the presidential election. Katangan elites, excluded from national power in favor of Tshisekedi's allies from his native Kasaï region, are among Tshisekedi's most prominent critics and clashed with Kasaïans, whom many see as "immigrants," over local power in the region. International Crisis Group (ICG) predicted that Katanga could later oppose Tshisekedi more strongly, as opposition could call for greater power and resources to devolve to provincial authorities or "create momentum behind demands for secession, which [had] been largely rhetorical" prior to the ICG's report.
While election irregularities played a part in the opposition's poor performance, other factors included the opposition's failure to unite behind a single candidate, the decision of prominent opposition figures Martin Fayulu and Joseph Kabila to have their coalitions sit out the election, their campaign strategies, and the failure to build grassroots party structures in other regions. In contrast, Tshisekedi had the backing of major political figures, which provided him with a broad territorial network and a foothold in various regions of the country.
CENI later cancelled results in two constituencies and disqualified 82 candidates, mostly members of the USN, from national and local races for fraud. While the move to target mostly USN members may appear to further accountability, analysts, as well as the Catholic Church, stated that it created a precedent for CENI policing its own work and may have underestimated the amount of fraud.
Elections were not organized in the territories of Kwamouth, Masisi, and Rutshuru due to ongoing armed conflict.
Background 2018 electoral fraud
President Félix Tshisekedi's election in 2018 was extremely controversial, with most independent observers, including the Catholic Church, believing that opposition candidate Martin Fayulu had actually won in a landslide. They believe that outgoing President Joseph Kabila, realising that a chosen successor candidate couldn't credibly win, struck a deal with Tshisekedi to make him president while Kabila governed jointly with him.
According to Jacques Mukena, Senior Governance Researcher at Ebuteli Institute, the election will most likely not be completely free and fair, but believes Tshisekedi and CENI are aware of the fact that they would be under closer scrutiny than in 2018 because more local and international observers would be watching. Additionally, candidates such as Delly Sesanga have already declared that they would believe the Catholic Church's opinion of who won the elections, not CENI's.
According to the Crisis Group, there is a fear of a wider political crisis if losing candidates or their backers do not accept the presidential results. Any crisis, while not inevitable, could worsen the already dire situation in the east.
On 20 November, Fayulu advocated for transparent and impartial elections, he insisted that the Congolese "must no longer accept someone stealing their victory."
Insecurity
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, two territories of the province 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 stabilise 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 finance.
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.
Schedule Selected dates from the electoral calendar: 24 December 2022—17 March 2023: Voter registration. 24 December—23 January (30 days): Registration in Kongo Central, Kinshasa, Kwango, Kwilu, Mai-Ndombe, Equateur, Mongala, Nord-Ubangi, Sud-Ubangi and Tshuapa provinces. 25 January—23 February (30 days): Registration in Kasaï, Kasaï-Central, Kasaï-Oriental, Lomami, Sankuru, Haut-Lomami, Haut-Katanga, Lualaba and Tanganyika provinces; also for expatriates in South Africa, Belgium, and France. 16 February—17 March (30 days): Registration in Bas-Uélé, Haut-Uélé, Ituri, Tshopo, North Kivu, South Kivu, and Maniema provinces; also for expatriates in Canada and the United States. 21 May 2023: Publication of registration statistics per electoral district—registration totals will determine the size of the provincial assemblies and of the local councils (commune, sector, and chiefdom councils). They are also used to apportion seats to electoral districts. 23 May 2023—15 June 2023: Proportional allocation of seats to electoral districts based on voter registration numbers; drafted and passed as a law. 26 June 2023—8 October 2023: Candidate registration. 26 June—15 July (20 days): Candidates for the National Assembly. 3 August—22 August (20 days): Candidates for provincial assemblies and commune councils. 9 September–8 October (30 days): Candidates for president. 19 November 2023—18 December 2023: Electoral campaigns. 19 November: Start of 30 day campaigns for president, National Assembly, and provincial assemblies. 4 December: Start of 15 day campaigns for commune councils. 20 December 2023: Election day. 20 January 2024: Presidential swearing in ceremony.
Electoral system
Presidential election The president is elected by plurality voting in one round. For the first time, some Congolese living abroad were able to vote in the presidential election. These were those living in Belgium, Canada, France, South Africa, and the United States.
National Assembly, provincial assembly, and commune council elections Electoral districts and seat allocation Except for the four National Assembly districts of Kinshasa, all electoral districts are simply administrative subdivisions of the country; the four exceptions are themselves groupings of administrative divisions of Kinshasa.
+ Contested electoral districts of the 2023 general electionTabulated from the lists of candidates for the National Assembly, the provincial assemblies, and the commune councils available at the CENI website . See for example the list of provincial deputy candidates of Tshuapa province . For the Districts are Total in Provinces in Kinshasa Districts Seats Candidates National Assembly territories and cities Kinshasa I-IV 179 (64) 484 26 Provincial assemblies communes 199 (37) 700 113 Commune councils communes 113 (0) 951 Notes: a) Postponed in the territories of Kwamouth, Masisi, and Rutshuru due to armed conflict. b) Kinshasa I: Lukunga, II: Funa, III: Mont-Amba, IV: Tshangu. c) Total single member districts in parentheses. d) Only the communes of Kinshasa and the 25 provincial capitals.
At the start of every five year election cycle voter registration takes place. The results for each province, including Kinshasa, are first used to proportionally distribute the 500 National Assembly seats and the 780 total seats of the provincial assemblies to the provinces. This determines the size of the provincial delegation in the National Assembly and the size of each provincial assembly. The second phase proportionally allocates provincial seats to each assembly district—in the case of the provincial assemblies, up to 10% of seats are reserved for the co-option of traditional leaders and are not allocated to an assembly district.
For the 2023 election, voter registration could not be carried out in some areas of the territories of Kwamouth, Masisi, and Rutshuru due to armed conflict. To deal with this, it was decided to postpone the elections in these territories, to reserve the same number of seats for these districts as they had in 2018, and to proportionally distribute the remaining seats to the other districts. The result was that only 484 National Assembly seats and 700 provincial assembly seats were to be contested.
Lumumbaville elected its first National Assembly deputy and its first deputy to the Provincial Assembly of Sankuru. This was the only new legislative district of the 2024-2028 legislature.;
In the case of a commune council election, the commune is the single multi-member electoral district with the number of members determined by the number of registered voters in the commune according to a fixed table.
Getting on the ballot Each candidate for these elections are part of a three-person ticket which includes candidates for first and second substitute. It is not unusual for a candidate to run for both a national and provincial assembly seat in which case they can keep but one and a substitute takes the other.