Frank
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2023: the weight of the opposition against Tshisekedi?
The next presidential election in the DRC will take place in 2023.
One year before the election, the positioning games have begun within the Congolese opposition.
On May 11, Martin Fayulu and Augustin Matata Ponyo, both candidates for the 2023 presidential election, met to discuss issues important to the DRC in their eyes.
According to several media on site in Kinshasa, the meeting between the two men lasted two hours with a focus on the patriotic bloc, which brings together Catholic and Protestant organizations, citizen movements as well as opposition parties.
An organization set up to obtain consensual reforms before the 2023 election.
However, as Dany Ayida, resident director in the DRC of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) recalls, last year Martin Fayulu also met the former president Joseph Kabila.
This gave rise to a number of speculations but there was no structured or formalized meeting of the opposition facing President Felix Tshisekedi.
Dany Ayida specifies that at present, the Congolese president has a fairly strong majority in Parliament and controls the government and the various provinces of the country quite well.
The opposition will therefore have to demonstrate its capacity for cohesion and proposal, insists Dany Ayida.
"There are quite a few key players that we know in the DRC through their political party and who have obvious capacities for action, but the upheavals within the political class have led a certain number of them to keep the silence.
So, we no longer really know at what level they are.
The majority of those we know who lead the political formations and the most representative groups are associated with the current government.
Over the coming months, we will see if there will be a real alliance that takes shape in favor of an opposition with a platform of proposals and we will see if the population adheres or not,” concludes the NDI expert.
Advance in scattered rank?
For Augustin Muhesi, professor of political science at the Catholic University of Graben, in Butembo, a united opposition could represent a counterweight to the current president.
However, the question is whether the Congolese political class is able to unite around an opposition.
“The Congolese political class is characterized by strong divisions linked in particular to the ideological deficit, to the deficit of a common project, explains Augustin Muhesi.
There is a movement of political vagrancy where political actors leave one camp for another, often they are ready to support the candidacy of the one who is in power because he is considered to have the political means, the financial means.
Unless, as the political universe is uncertain, we are witnessing a paradigm shift", emphasizes the teacher.
Kabila, the comeback?
So what about a possible return of Joseph Kabila on the political scene?
For Professor Muhesi, this is of course the wish of those nostalgic for the Kabila era.
But he also insists on the fact that even if he does not appear, Joseph Kabila could continue to play in the shadows or finance the candidacy of a political actor who would be able to protect them... and its important economic interests.
www.mediacongo.net
Food for thought on the Road to Manono
Cheers
Frank
