As the country braces for the crucial but doubtful polls next month, Tshisekedi is a desperate man who is ready to do anything. With an all-but-empty score sheet after five years as president, Tshisekedi is embarrassed and anxious to face the Congolese voters, who he knows did not vote for him in the first place. Sadly, he has chosen the eastern city of Goma as the place to vent his frustrations.
First, he sent his elite presidential guards who massacred more than 100 Congolese in Goma on August 30. They, subsequently, tried to erase any evidence of the massacres by shipping the bodies to a military hospital morgue. On November 6, the FARDC/FDLR targeted power stations that feed Goma’s electricity grid, plunging the city into total darkness. They repeated the same heinous action 24 hours after the damage was repaired by the power company, removing any doubt that Tshisekedi’s intentions are aimed at hurting the people of Goma.
Failure to fulfill campaign promises places Tshisekedi between a rock and a hard place in regard to winning a second term in office. After fraudulently ascending to power, Tshisekedi promised the Congolese people heaven on earth. He even said he would turn DRC into “the Germany of Africa”. However, his winning wager was that he would break the cycle of the more than two decades-long insecurity in the East. This is a man who ascended to power by a wild card trying to desperately appease and endear himself to a skeptical population.
Five years later, the conflict in the east has escalated with the increase of armed groups from more than 100 to more than 250, the majority of them directly created through his reckless and inept governance discourse. Poverty, disease, and illiteracy have hit unprecedented levels in the entire country, but more specifically in the east where criminal armed groups, including the FDLR, a genocidaires outfit that has enjoyed state hospitality for decades, have been consistently displacing and killing Congolese for more than 20 years.
Electricity cut in Goma will be a useful token for Tshisekedi’s populist agenda to conceal his failures amidst growing dissatisfaction on how he misgoverned the country during his first term in office. Seeing that there can be no way possible to redeem his failures a month before the elections, Tshisekedi has decided that going completely gangster is his only way out. The latest theatrics of shelling power infrastructure in Goma and apportioning blame to M23 is a case in point of the regime’s agenda to sustain conflict in the eastern part of the country, hence declaring it not fit for polls.
Thisekedi knows he can never win a war against the M23, neither can he win a free, fair election, he has, therefore, stubbornly stayed adamant about resolving the standoff amicably as recommended by regional and international communities. He still plans to retain the presidency through fraudulent means.