5 African Nations Set for Elections in 2017

DR Congo

Elections may or may not be held in the DR Congo in 2017. Congo’s election commission says it cannot produce an updated voters register before 2018. The Congolese were originally scheduled to go to the polls in December of last year to elect a new president to replace incumbent President Joseph Kabila, whose constitutionally mandated term ended December 20th.

On the expiration of his tenure, Kabila attempted to extend his term in office, which immediately led to outbreaks of protests around the country with several news agencies reporting a violent clamp down on protesters by security agencies.

Thankfully, Congo managed to avert what would have been a slide into anarchy and a re-enactment of a brutal civil war that raged between 1995 and 2003. The major players in Congolese politics came to an agreement in which elections will now be held on a yet to be decided day in 2017.

The DR Congo elects its president by a plurality of votes in one round. The 500-member House of Assembly is elected by two methods; a first-past-the-post voting system and an open list proportional representation method.