The stakes are as high as the wait is long in DR Congo. Voting rolled over for an unscheduled second day in a sprawling, often unruly Central African nation that’s picking a president, as well as national, regional and municipal lawmakers. The logistics are challenging and the politics are rough in a resource-rich country that’s dogged by poverty, corruption and decades of insurgencies in the east.
Five years ago, the DR Congo voted out an incumbent president peacefully through the ballot box. The process, though, was far from perfect, with evidence of wide-scale irregularities. Will this time be different?
We ask our panel about the players and the arbiters, who include both poll monitors from the clergy and a national electoral commission. In a nation where the state itself is weak, we measure what's changed in five years, whether citizens have benefited at all from a precious minerals boom, and what’s next for what's now the world's biggest Francophone nation.
Produced by Charles Wente, Guillaume Gougeon and Juliette Brown.
