Why Not Some Good News For A Change?

by hilzoy

Via The Head Heeb (who has an excellent background piece), the good news in question:

"Congolese former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba said on Tuesday he would go into political opposition after his presidential election defeat "to preserve peace and save the country from chaos and violence".

Bemba, wearing a business suit in a broadcast on his TV channel, said he stood by his complaints against President Joseph Kabila's victory in last month's poll, which were rejected on Monday by the Supreme Court.

"However, in the higher interests of the nation, to preserve peace and save the country from chaos and violence, today I pledge before God, the nation and history to lead this struggle for change as part of a strong republican opposition," he said."

This is really, really wonderful news. As I wrote before, these were the first Presidential elections since the end of Congo's horrific civil war, in which an estimated 3.8 million people died, and God alone knows how many were wounded, raped, or otherwise brutalized. A lot of things could have gone wrong at this point. The elections could have been rigged, but apparently they were basically fair. Kabila (or Bemba) could have won by a very small margin, encouraging the loser to fight the results; instead Kabila got 58% -- too large a margin for allegations that he had not in fact won to be plausible, given the reports by international observers. Bemba could have decided to fight anyways, but it looks as though he won't.

And that's a wonderful thing.

You can find updates on the situation in Congo here (thanks again to Matttbastard for the link.)

Comments

[radish]

Cool. Hey maybe he's angling for a shot at that Ibrahim prize. Who says market-oriented solutions don't work?

[Jonathan Edelstein]

I'm hardly one to object to good news, and I agree that the news is good, but it's too early to break out the champagne. There's a battle royal going on in the National Assembly right now between the Kabila and Bemba blocs, with the former trying to keep the latter out of committees and the latter threatening street protests if they're denied participation. The mass political arrests that followed the post-election clashes (including both the sweep of street children and the indictment of a prominent human rights lawyer) are also a sign that the country is reverting to soft dictatorship. That, and the continued sporadic fighting in the east, don't bode particularly well.

But it's a lot better to worry about these things than about full-scale civil war.

[Theophrastus Bombastus von Hoehenheim den Sidste]

58% -- too large a margin for allegations that he had not in fact won to be plausible,

It's really sad, when the kind of thinking is required in the United States as well.