For Congo’s next president, winning may be the easy part

On December 20thUN , as went to press, millions of Congolese were queuing to vote. The much-criticised electoral commission will probably claim that the very fact of holding a general election on time in a country four times the size of France should itself be considered a triumph. Yet as Moïse Katumbi, a leading opposition candidate, angrily puts it: “Which type of election?”Some 1.7m voters in the east will not cast a ballot because of conflict there. Many others elsewhere may be disfranchised. Crucial papers for reporting the results across the 75,000 polling stations arrived so late in Kinshasa, the capital, that the government had to beg the peacekeepers it has spent years scapegoating and other countries such as Angola and Egypt to provide planes to fly the papers around the country. The illegibility of millions of voter cards will add to the chaos. Though the results are almost certain to be disputed, the president is meant to be sworn in on January 20th.