Kagame: Tshisekedi has Never Been Elected President of DRC
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has said his Congolese counterpart, Felix Tshisekedi has never been elected as President.
“The person who is causing us problems in this situation I am talking about between Rwanda and DRC has never, twice, been elected,” said Kagame on Thursday during a meeting in Kigali with diplomats accredited to Rwanda.
“This man, Tshisekedi, was never elected,” Kagame insisted.
“The first time, he was not elected at all. Only that you (western countries) don’t talk about it publicly. I am talking about it publicly,” he added.
“The second time, nothing (electoral victory) happened and you know it. So, what values are you telling us that you beat some people for and others you don’t know what to do?”
The development comes high on the heels of worsening relations between Kinshasa and Kigali over mutual support of armed movements in eastern DRC.
While Kigali backs the M23 rebellion with arms and soldiers, DRC backs the FDLR, a militia whose leaders and ideology are blamed for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Tshisekedi won the 2023 general elections with a 73% vote, according to the country’s electoral body.
However, opposition figures including Martin Fayuli, Moise Katumbi and Joseph Kabila disputed the electoral outcome, saying the vote was rigged by Tshisekedi.
In 2021, the Congo Research Group (CRG) published two separate leaks of data related to the Congolese presidential elections which showed that Tshisekedi had lost the election to Fayulu.
The first dataset was a partial tally of election results from the central database of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), representing 86% of the total votes cast, which was leaked by a whistleblower.
The second was a leak from the Catholic Church. The episcopal conference (CENCO), which represents all Congolese bishops, fielded 39,824 observers on election day. Their data represented 43% of ballots cast.
The two documents, which were obtained independently, provided almost identical results, suggesting that Martin Fayulu won the elections by a large margin.
The CENI leak put Fayulu’s share of the vote at 59,42%, followed by Felix Tshisekedi with 18,97% and Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary with 18,54%. CENCO’s tallies were 62,80%, 15,00%, and 17,99%, respectively.
The results contradicted those published by the election commission on January 10th 2018, which proclaimed Felix Tshisekedi the winner with 38,57% of the vote, followed by Martin Fayulu with 34,8% and Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary with 23,8%.
These two documents suggested that the elections were dramatically rigged in the favor of Felix Tshisekedi––the difference between his tally of the official results and the leak is around 3,6 million votes.
However, the courts upheld Thisekedi’s election.
Kagame asked western diplomats to avoid hypocrisy while dealing with issues of governance in African countries.
“And you know it (electoral malpractices in DRC). You know it. This is why I was saying, it doesn’t matter evidence, it doesn’t matter facts or claim. It is just what you think applies to you or benefits you,” he added.
“We all need peace. Rwanda actually needs peace more than anybody. Because we have already tested the lack of it and the meaning of that,” the Rwandan leader emphasised.