Presidential elections are being held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the first time in 17 years. The current President, Joseph Kabila, is stepping down two years later than expected- earlier elections were postponed due to issues counting votes. This alone has caused controversy that Kabila has been holding onto power, since he cannot run for another term. Despite promises that it would be an ‘orderly transfer of power,’ Kabila’s extended Presidency has been the first of many issues surrounding the elections. Exclusion of over 1 million voters, Ebola outbreaks and intimidation from military are all causes for an extremely unfair and messy election. However, one of the greatest concerns for the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the use of electronic voting. Citizens were shocked when, a day after the election of Martin Fayulu, a text message notified them that the government shut down the internet. In particular, the capital and opposition stronghold cities have been affected by the shutdown. Fayulu insists this is to “avoid broadcasting his overwhelming victory.” Despite all of these problems, Kabila states the election was “free and fair.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the internet shutdown is in the title of the article, I was mostly interested in the other factors impacting the election. Since this is the first election in almost two decades, it’s easy to see why there would be some issues. However, the number of extreme events, such as the military intimidation and a huge part of the population (including entire cities) being excluded from voting has only escalated up to the internet shutdown. This just proves the centralized authority in Democratic Republic of the Congo and that the election was not fair. I was also surprised that Kabila has been in power for so long- he has been President for 17 years and is barred from running for office again! I think it’s a concern that a former oil executive (Martin Fayulu) was elected as President, and that the internet shutdown mainly impacts Kinshasa (the capital) and the opposition strongholds of Goma and Lubumbashi. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Presidential elections are being held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the first time in 17 years. The current President, Joseph Kabila, is stepping down two years later than expected- earlier elections were postponed due to issues counting votes. This alone has caused controversy that Kabila has been holding onto power, since he cannot run for another term…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2775,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773\/revisions\/2775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}