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Tens of thousands of supporters welcomed Congolese opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi on his return to Kinshasa on Tuesday to launch his campaign to replace President Joseph Kabila in next month's elections.
"We will go with the people and we will win," said Tshisekedi, the son of the late Etienne Tshisekedi, 55, who for decades has been the face of opposition from the DRC.
"We will take 60% of the votes," he said.
He also promised to deploy observers to fight electoral fraud, while his teammate Vital Kamerhe, a former parliamentary speaker who had returned home, said the duo had made a "winning ticket".
While they were traveling to Kinshasa Airport from Addis Ababa, a crowd of sympathizers from the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) of Tshisekedi and of the Union for the Congolese Nation (UNC) of Kamerhe were on hand to welcome them.
Police briefly fired tear gas to try to spread the crowds to let their convoy pbad, an AFP journalist said.
According to an agreement unveiled Friday in Kenya, the duo will run on a common ticket which, if successful, will see Tshisekedi become president and Kamerhe appointed prime minister.
Kamerhe, who ran against Kabila in 2011, will be Tshisekedi's campaign manager before the December 23 vote.
Their decision to qualify for a common ticket came just days after the two men withdrew their support for an agreement reached in Geneva in which seven opposition parties were united around a single party. common candidate in order to strengthen the chances of victory of the opposition.
This candidate, the little-known MP Martin Fayulu, will now fight against Tshisekedi as well as former Interior Minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, the successor chosen by Kabila.
"We will not ask the Congolese people to boycott the vote," Tshisekedi said.
"That would leave the road open" to Kabila's candidate, Shadary, he said.
"We will deploy observers everywhere to avoid cheating."
The main support areas of Tshisekedi are in the west, around Kinshasa and in central Kasai, while Kamerhe has called for support from the east of the conflict-affected country.
S addressing to AFP last year, Tshisekedi, who does not enjoy the same degree of popularity as his father, said that when he won the presidency, he would create a "commission truth and reconciliation "to hold Kabila to account.
It is committed to restoring the rule of law, combating corruption gangrene and restoring peace in the east of this vast, torn apart country of Central Africa. conflicts.
Fayulu is backed by opposition heavyweights Jean-Pierre Bemba and Moise Katumbi, both of whom are banned from running.
Bemba, former warlord and deputy chairman of Kabila from 2003 to 2006, was convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court after two years of imprisonment.
Formerly presented as an opposition candidate by consensus, the great businessman Katumbi, who lives in exile in Belgium, has been accused of causing mercenaries to overthrow Kabila and to be sentenced in absentia for real estate fraud .
Shadary, a former minister of the Radical Interior, is one of 15 Congolese under sanctions from the European Union, charged with human rights violations between December 2016 and the beginning of 2018.
In all, 21 candidates are enrolled in the race to replace Kabila, 47, who has ruled the country since the badbadination of his father, President Laurent-Desire Kabila, in 2001.
Kabila's second and last elected term came to an end almost two years ago, but he remained in office thanks to a transition clause in the Constitution.
This unstable and poverty-stricken nation has never experienced a peaceful transition of power since Belgium's independence in 1960.
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