Opposition party leader Etienne Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sept. 5, 2011. (JUNIOR KANNAH/AFP/Getty Images)JUNIOR KANNAH/AFP / Getty Images
Fairness is an illusion in the dangerous politics of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where bullets have been the preferred means of changing leaders. But by declaring himself president and calling for a violent attack to release political prisoners three weeks before the election, leading opposition candidate Étienne Tshisekedi has damaged democracy in Africa's most underachieving country.
Joseph Kabila, the incumbent, is no saint. He engineered a constitutional change to eliminate run-off elections if no candidate won a majority, destabilizing the opposition. The UN has documented 188 human-rights violations related to the elections, with dozens of attacks on Mr. Tshisekedi's supporters by government forces. Mr. Kabila even scooped up most of the airplanes needed to campaign – the DRC is as vast as all of Western Europe.
But democracy demands a respect for whatever democratic freedoms do exist. Instead, Mr. Tshisekedi abused those freedoms, saying on TV, "We don't need to wait for the elections…From this day on I am the head of state of the DRC... I will ask my base... to mobilize everywhere and set free the supporters and other opponents and break all the prisons. And if unfortunately, police officers and other soldiers come to bother them, then they should be taught a lesson."
Is this the same Mr. Tshisekedi who told The Globe and Mail, during a June visit to Toronto, that "to take power, we don't rely on the guns, but the ballot boxes"? Who crowed that he would "restore the rule of law, where justice rules, where physical security reigns"?
Congo counts. It has 71 million people, and enough mineral, hydroelectric and forestry resources, to make corporations and developed countries, including Canada, swoon. But it has yet to shake off the trauma of a century-old genocide committed by Belgium, the 32-year rule of world-leading kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko, or a civil war triggered by a spillover of the genocide from neighbouring Rwanda. The legacy today? Too many victims of rape; too many children dying in infancy; too little national unity; too few jobs.
A peaceful democratic transition would be a first for the DRC, and more democracy can help it reach its potential. Mr. Kabila's violence must not be met with violence, but with democratic values – especially on the airwaves, where democracy can either flourish or suffocate.