 After an extremely controversial election, marred by all sorts of irregularities, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Felix Shisakedi, has been declared the winner by the country's election commission. Now it has to be certified by the constitutional court. Meanwhile, opposition parties, opposition candidates have called the elections a sham. They have, you know, flagged the various kinds of irregularities that took place during, in the run-up to the elections and during the elections itself. The election process had to actually be extended by one day because of some of these issues. We have with us Kambale Musawali to talk more about this. Kambale, so the results being announced on Sunday, could you maybe take us to the past 10 to 15 days of what has happened in the DRC, the election process itself, and what happened in Safdemath? Well, December 20th, Komolis went to the poll to elect a leader. Not just the presidential, we had four elections taking place. The presidential elections legislative, provincial, and also local elections. In these four elections, the electoral commission came out on December 31st, letting us know that the winner of the election that declared him to be Felix Shisakedi, pretty much giving him another five-year term for him to remain there. But this is being contested mainly because of the process, the electoral process. What happened on December 20th? On December 20th, one-third of the polling stations were not open. And then on that day, according to our law, the electoral law, elections take place for one day only. But what took place is that they didn't just vote for one day or two days or three days. They extended the vote for seven days. That's very problematic because after the first day or so of elections, you don't get the electoral observers or the witnesses in these polling stations. One-third of the polling stations is quite a lot. So we have that challenge. But second, let's look at the process, not just on election day. The issue did not start on election day. It started when they decided to organize the election. That cost us $1.2 billion. And in the end, people feel that their voice has not been heard, that the process disenfranchised many people. So what took place? The electoral commissioner, Denis Kadima, who was pretty much imposed on the so-called independent electoral commission, was not the choice of the civil society groups. There was a coalition of eight institutions, mostly religious, who had to designate the leader of the electoral commission. Denis Kadima's name came up, and the choice is done by consensus. But they changed the process to be a vote. So we have actually an electoral commissioner who is a friend of the president pending the elections. So that's one issue. The second issue was the electoral role, the re-registration of voters. When we look at the process as well, we had the election in 2018, we had the election in 2011, we had the election in 2006. All you need to do is update the electoral role. What they decided to do was to re-register every single Congolese who needed to vote. The numbers they provided at the time is 44 million people registered to vote. As of December 31, the electoral commissioner stated that it's 41 million who are eligible to vote who are in the database. But what happened with that issue? When someone registered to vote and received an electoral card within a few weeks, literally two to three weeks, your face on the card will disappear and your name also will disappear. That's a problem. How do you go to the poll with an electoral card where no one knows who you are? The electoral commissioner, Denis Kadima stated that that's not going to be an issue. Easily they could pull up your data. What did we see on electoral day, on election day? On election day, we had people going to vote and found out that someone else already voted for them. Now, how do we determine that? The card was used, the data was used. How did this happen? So the issue of the electoral card is another. The third one, the publishing of the list of electors, which is a decision by the law that you must release the voter roll was not released. The logistical challenges across the country is another. So we rush into a process of election to create a sense that there was a process looking sort of fair where we know that in the end, the result will not favor the ordinary Congolese who want to see change in the Congo. For now, beyond the issues, let's look at the presidential election itself. We had 26 presidential candidates. And on December 31st, the results were released. And with the result release, what was fascinating is the voter turnout. The voter turnout is 40%. Out of the 41 million people, they're the same, right? That's quite problematic. When we look at the videos and they guess we're not a population, the people of the Congo turned that in mass. So that number is much lower than a previous election, which doesn't make sense why the number is this low. Secondly, out of the 18 million people, according to them, 18 million, 45,000, 348 Congolese voted. 73% of them, according to the electoral commission, voted for Chisakini. And then the rest voted for the other opposition leaders and presidential candidate. But when you hear that, you hear 26 candidates, you hear that there is a winner with overwhelming majority, but you don't look at the data, it appears fair. But looking at the data release, only four presidential candidates had more than 4% of the votes. The remaining had less than 1%. So pretty much the election was among four people, if we have to look at it this way, right? And are you pulling up names? For example, I'll pull up the name of the Nobel Peace Prize, Danny Mukwege, who according to the electoral commission, 39,728 Congolese voted for him. That's impossible for those numbers to happen. So that number is not realizing that we can go back to the data and say these numbers don't make sense. But from the international community, or even the African countries, because most people who have congratulated Chisakini's election are African countries, which is different from the past. You see that people have just completely ignored all the electoral issues. The issue is now who is declared the winner. The issue is the process. If the Congolese people don't feel that the process is transparent, the process is fair, they will check out all the democratic processes, of all the democratic processes, and find all the means to transform the country. And that can be also devastating for the country because there are many interests at stake. It's not as simple as who we are voting on December 20th, 2023. We also have to look at the Congo from a geopolitical and geo-strategic perspective about what is at stake in the Congo today as the world is moving toward renewable energy away from fossil fuel and Congo's importance. That is really what is at stake at this election as well. Red Kambale, Chisakini coming to power in 2018 after a similarly very controversial election, a lot of reports of backroom deals that were struck involving various regional players as well. So how do you see the current response to his coming back to power in this context, as well as the context of the local political forces with which he had struck deals? There is no major difference between 2018 and present, right? The former electoral commissioner Kone Nanga has come out in 2023, clearly stating that there were backroom deals for Chisakini to be declared the winner. So the person who actually ran the election has already told us that a 2018 election was rigged. Today, I don't see that other countries such as South Africa, Kenya or Egypt are going to take any other position. So Seru Ramaphosa of South Africa has already sent his congratulatory messages. There are some strange reasons. The only country that I see putting out a statement of concern around protesters and election issues is the United States. And I understand why, right? They always have to have these track record of supporting democracy and so on. But I'm pretty sure they are okay with the result. But our challenge in DRC revolves around people really understanding what is the local challenges of the Congolese and how can people on the outside support, put pressure on the negative forces, the external negative forces while we are fighting the local bourgeoisie. So I believe that the study score of 2018 and 2023 now, now going into 2024, is going to still be the same whereby they will recognize this rigged election for the interest of different hegemonic blacks across the African continent and also Western interests as tech in the DRC. But Kamali, among the challenges she's faced was of course the M23 rebellion, which is of course also backed by Rwanda. Is there likely to be any kind of change in his approach or do we see this situation continuing or worsening over time? It's becoming very interesting the situation with the M23. Particularly actions of the United States before the elections, right? On November 19, Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haynes, flew to Kigali to meet Paul Kagame or Rwanda. On November 20, she flew to Kinshasa and summoned the president of the Congo, Chisakedi, to meet her at the airport. Most Americans will not know who is Avril Haynes, right? Most Americans will say, will hear, they will say, State Department official. The Director of National Intelligence manages 17 intelligence agencies of the United States, including the CIA. She is the boss of the CIA director. Why did she fly into this country? Coming out of those two-day visit on November 19 and November 20, a statement came out of the White House saying that the U.S. has been able to broker a ceasefire deal not between Congo and the rebels, but between Congo and Rwanda. So the question now becomes, is Congo at war with Rwanda for a ceasefire deal to be signed? Congolese will tell you yes. For the past two decades, we have clearly stated to the world that Rwanda and Uganda have invaded the Congo twice in 1998 and up until today continue to support proxy rebel militias. This tells me that the United States is aware of what is happening. But the ceasefire deal had a very interesting component, right? They say that they will share information with the Congolese and the Rwanda and Rwanda intelligence information around movements in the region. That tells me again that the United States is clearly aware of what's happening. But this is coming up in the backdrop of something that I was not aware of. In December, the New York Times published an article that mostly focused on the Eastern Port of the U.S.C. about the situation there. But they quoted some military officials in the foreign military officials who stated that the U.S. response in November was precipitated by an action of the Congolese government. But what did the Congolese government do? They bought Chinese drones for the Congolese military. And these drones in November shot Rwandan soldiers on Congolese soil. Something that never happened before, right? And whenever Rwanda soldiers were shot on Congolese soil, the U.S. preempted a diplomatic issue by sending the director of national intelligence to Rwanda and Congo to ceasefire a deal. And this is very important to understand. In the contradiction of the local bourgeoisie oppressing the Congolese people, the pure local bourgeoisie, in my view, does not have a political ideology. But they are actually working with everyone. They are working with Turkish military, Russian military, China, even Israel, right? The Israeli Defense Force reservists, over 200 of them were in the Congo, and in October were recalled from the Congo to go kill Palestinians, to go fight in Palestine. So Israeli soldiers were also there. So that's been their policy. But what the U.S. is afraid is that they are going to, quote, unquote, lose the Congo to China. So they are engaging diplomatically to be on the right side of the Shisekidi regime. This is how you can see coming out of the so-called U.S. Africa summit, U.S. investing so much in diplomacy on the African continent, signing a memorandum of understanding for the exploitation of cobalts and copper in the Congo and Zambia, passing an infrastructure bill in the U.S. Congress, right, in terms of billions of dollars, where they e-mark funding for building a railroad that will go from DRC through Zambia and Angola through the port on Angola, what they call the Lobito corridor, taking Congo's cobalt, copper, Zambia's cobalt cap, taking it to the Atlantic Ocean out to the west. So seeing that, those are actions that the U.S. is taking to counter China. So we can't just look at the situation in the Congo from the election perspective. We have to look at what is also at stake. At stake is that we have a government mirroring the policies of Mobutu, the longtime dictator, who, when he was there in power for 32 years, literally spoke to everyone to maintain his power. The Chisekedi regime is using the same model while oppressing the people, while rigging elections, by the U.S. only looking for what they can gain in this new world where they need the lithium of the Congo for Manano. They need the cobalt of the Congo from thank you for moving our others, using its institutions, be it the Comadi, Comilitary, to rein in the Congolese government for U.S. interest. Thank you so much, Comali, for speaking to us. I think for taking us beyond the headlines into some of the geopolitical issues and some of the far-reaching issues of what is happening, our aspects and implications of what is happening in the Congo right now. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's all we have time for in this interview. We'll be back with future shows, future interviews, where we discuss some of these issues, so keep watching People's Dispatch.