• Tshisekedi, 60, was declared winner of the December 20 elections in a landslide victory of 73 per cent of the vote.
• Despite being immediate neighbours by virtue of sharing a border, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan are yet to congratulate Tshisekedi.
Image: BBC
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame are among regional heads of State that are yet to congratulate Democratic Republic of Congo’s Felix Tshisekedi on his re-election for a second term.
Tshisekedi, 60, was declared winner of the December 20 elections in a landslide victory of 73 per cent of the vote.
Kenya’s William Ruto, Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan and Burundi’s Evariste Ndayishimiye have already sent their congratulatory messages, as has the East African Community Secretary General Peter Mutuku.
Ndayishimiye was the first of the regional leaders to congratulate their DRC counterpart followed by Hassan and Ruto.
Despite being immediate neighbours by virtue of sharing a border, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan have remained mum.
The EAC is a regional intergovernmental organisation of eight partner States comprising Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
The body’s aim is to strengthen ties between member states through a common market, a common customs tariff, and a range of public services to achieve balanced economic growth within the region.
DRC joined the EAC in May 2022 but it’s yet to fully assent to all of the bloc's relevant protocols.
The delays in relaying congratulatory messages to Tshisekedi by some members serve to further expose the icy relations within the EAC.
To begin with, the EAC did not send election observers to DRC after Kinshasa denied them accreditation.
“This development is due to the fact that although EAC was ready, the request to undertake the exercise has not been granted by the relevant authorities,” the bloc said in a statement on December 19.
On December 17, Kinshasa recalled its envoy in Arusha Pierre Masala and its envoy in Nairobi, John Nyakeru in protest of a meeting of rebel leaders held in Nairobi.
The meeting was held to purportedly form a coalition to unseat President Tshisekedi in the just concluded polls.
Kenya distanced itself from the meeting with President Ruto later revealing that he refused a plea from Kinshasa to arrest the rebels.
Further, the EAC was late in deploying a military mission to contain rebel groups that control large swathes of eastern DRC where voting did not take place due to the volatile nature of the region.
The mandate of the EAC Regional Force (EACRF) ended on December 8 amid controversy with Kinshasa accusing the troops of failing to exterminate dozens of rebel groups that have battled government forces for the past three decades.
Kinshasa and Kigali have had icy relations since 2022 with the former accusing Rwanda of backing the M23 rebel group in eastern DRC.
Rwanda denied the accusation and in turn accused DRC of arming and fighting alongside the Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).