Congo's new head of state Tshisekedi: President Zweifel

Félix Tshisekedi, head of the Union for Social Progress Party, is the new President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This means that an election - postponed by two years and discredited by numerous disagreements - now has an official winner. Whether Tshisekedi actually won is unclear. But the inauguration of the former opposition politician on this Thursday first creates facts.

Tshisekedi does not have much political experience. And if so, then second-hand. His father Étienne, who died in 2017, was for decades an important representative of the Congolese opposition and democracy movement. Founded in the early eighties, its UDPS party was the resistance movement against dictator Mobuto Sese Seko.

AP / Sunday Times

Shortly before his disempowerment in 1997, dictator Mobutu made the opposition Étienne Tshisekedi the premier

Son Félix, now 55, spent the time fighting against Mobuto in safe foreign countries. He lived and studied in Brussels, Belgium.

There he also remained after graduation and became head of the party of his father, responsible for the Congolese diaspora. He is well connected there. The Congo, the country he is now to lead, has long not been his center of life.

Son Félix called father Étienne his "master". However, this one did not seem to have such a high opinion of his Filius: "Etienne did not hide his skepticism about his son's abilities, he never demanded much from him," said Albert Moleka, former high-ranking UDPS official, the BBC. Félix has "always shown a lot of goodwill," says Moleka. He was missing "a final goal".

Now it looks like he has found one. However, the inauguration was not quite smooth. His inaugural address had to interrupt Tshisekedi because of a faint attack. When he regained his composure, the new ruler promised: "Our Congo will not be a Congo of hatred and tribal thought." And further: "Our fight will be for the benefit of all citizens of this land."

That he actually got the most votes of the citizens in the election on 30 December, may well be doubted. According to election commission Tshisekedi should have got 18 million votes and thus 38 percent. The runner-up Martin Fayulu has reached only 34 percent. A complaint was rejected by the Constitutional Court. The way to the inauguration was free.

Foreign countries agree: Martin Fayulu should be the winner

Polls were ahead of the poll Fayulu. A count of the Catholic Bishops' Conference (Cenco) on election day, which with 40,000 helpers wrote off the results directly from the polling stations, soon declared that there was a "clear winner".

False interim results from the official census and from the Cenco count in the Financial Times are almost equal, and then the international community settled down: opposition candidate Martin Fayulu, a member of the Congolese National Assembly and former oil manager, must have won.

Fayulu came in both evaluations to about 60 percent and landed well ahead of the runner-up Tshisekedi, which therefore only 19 percent fetched. The fact that both datasets from two different sources provided a nearly identical result makes manipulation of the values ​​very unlikely, said Jason Stern, director of the Congo Research Group, the FT. And even the African Union expressed itself unusually clear: one had "serious doubts" on the announced result of the electoral commission. It did not help.

Kabila's candidate failed, his party won a whopping majority

Beneficiaries could now be the old ruler Joseph Kabila. In defiance of the constitution, he simply ruled since the end of 2016. Only after massive pressure and protests did he consent to elections.

In fact, Kabila had sent a man of his own to Emmanuel Shadary - the former Home Secretary, who violently defeated protests against Kabila and was therefore sanctioned by the EU. The plan: his man should become president, Kabila his prime - the classic Putin maneuver.

Much less popular than Shadary but you could not be in the Congo. So two variants appeared possible: The choice is drastically faked, and Shadary declared the winner. Or the opposition wins because the ruler does not dare to commit such a brazen forgery. President would be Fayulu.

Hardly anyone clearly saw the third way: In early November, Congo's collective opposition had met in Geneva, and there agreed on Fayulu as sole challenger for Kabila's husband Shadary. Tshisekedi, too, had traveled to Switzerland, and gave the pledges of his party.

But then, not two days later, Tshisekedi decided to. His followers had received him in Kinshasa angrily, his Secretary-General threatened him with the dismissal as party leader. So Tshisekedi recanted and declared, "Geneva was nothing but a trap." His falling over, he pointed to strength. He wanted to be "a president who listens," reported "Jeune Afrique".

In retrospect, that was when Kabila secretly bet on Tshisekedi. Now that he has been declared the victor, Tshisekedi is conciliatory with the autocrat. "The Congo has won," his success is not just the success of a camp, said Tshisekedi. Now he will reconcile the land.