A puppet is set to replace the president

“WE WANT ELECTION day to be a party, not a day people lose their lives,” says President Joseph Kabila (pictured). After a ballot scheduled for December 23rd, he is planning to step down, he says. Having ruled the Democratic Republic of Congo for 18 years, he is constitutionally required to. Entertaining foreign journalists (a rare event) at his farm east of Kinshasa, the capital, he is mild-mannered. He chuckles at tough questions, and wanders off topic when disinclined to answer. Asked if the election will be free and fair, however, he is direct: “No question about that.” Few outside his circle concur.

Still, it will be the first time that Congo has ever changed its leader at the ballot box. Mobutu Sese Seko, a kleptocrat who grabbed power in 1965 and used public cash to swill pink champagne and charter Concorde to go shopping in Paris, fled his palace moments before it was ransacked by soldiers in 1997. The man who toppled him, Laurent Kabila, was shot dead by a bodyguard in 2001. His son has ruled ever since, locking up critics and crushing protests. In recent years thousands have died violently.

The election has been a long time coming. The constitution required Mr Kabila to step down in 2016. He tried to change it, failed, and stuck around for two more years anyway. The Catholic Church, one of Congo’s few well-functioning institutions, organised peaceful protests calling for him to step down. On three Sundays, congregations in Kinshasa marched out of church after mass waving palm fronds and placards. The police sprayed them with tear gas and bullets, killing 18 people and dumping bodies in the river.

Mr Kabila probably will step down, having been pressed to do so by Angola, South Africa and other African states that fear chaos if he lingers. But it would be foolish to expect voting day to be jolly. More than 100 rebel groups are at large. A jihadist militia, reportedly with links to Islamic State, is terrorising an eastern area that is also being ravaged by Ebola. Many Congolese will be too nervous to vote.

Few trust the electoral commission, widely believed to be in Mr Kabila’s pocket. Polling booths may well go up in flames. Two people were killed by police at an opposition rally in the capital on December 11th. Some 105,000 electronic voting tablets from South Korea have been nicknamed machines à voler (stealing machines). Delivering them to 84,000 polling stations, many in remote areas accessible only by helicopter, boat or motorbike, will be tricky. If batteries go flat, it will be hard to recharge them. Only 1% of people in rural Congo have access to electricity.

“Voting takes a minute,” says Corneille Nangaa, the commission’s head. It may take rather longer. Jean-Pierre Bemba, an opposition leader and former warlord barred from standing, says it will take an average of six minutes, partly because so many voters are unused to technology. If so, Congo’s 40m voters (in a population of maybe 82m) would need at least two days to cast their ballots. Mr Nangaa says voting must not exceed 24 hours.

If the election is too obviously flawed and enough people in and outside Congo complain, it could be invalidated and put off yet again—leaving Mr Kabila in power. If not, the winner is likely to be Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, Mr Kabila’s handpicked successor, a former interior minister. The EU has just renewed sanctions against him for the part he played in suppressing protests in 2016 and 2017, so he will not be able to visit it. “Congo is as big as the European Union, so Shadary will have so many provinces to cover,” says Mr Kabila breezily. “I don’t think he will miss Europe.”

Mr Shadary faces a weak opposition. Two of his most serious rivals, Mr Bemba and Moïse Katumbi, a former governor, were prevented from running. The rest of the opposition has splintered. In a short-lived moment of hope last month, seven opposition leaders said they had chosen a single candidate, but within a day two of them peeled off to form a rival coalition.

Mr Kabila says he will keep himself busy spending time with his mother. He will also lend a hand to Mr Shadary (or any other winner). He may even try to run again for president next time around, as the constitution allows, perhaps having pulled Mr Shadary’s strings for five years. He is studiously vague about this: “2023 is way away.” At a summit in August he told leaders that he would not say goodbye but rather “à bientôt” (see you soon). Did this mean he plans to return? “I was paraphrasing a movie I have seen very often...when Arnold Schwarzenegger says ‘I’ll be back’. So don’t take lots of my jokes out of context.”

Mr Kabila has stayed in power by keeping friends and rivals weak. The army is often without ammunition, save for the presidential guard. Mr Kabila’s loyalists have been slotted into the constitutional court and electoral commission. Anyone who becomes too popular is in danger. Denis Mukwege, the winner of this year’s Nobel peace prize for treating victims of wartime rape, survived an assassination attempt in 2012. An army general with a big following was murdered in 2014.

Mr Kabila will want his successor to protect the wealth he has accrued. He and his family have interests in mines, banks, real estate, farms and airlines. Their companies have permits for diamond mining that extend along Congo’s southern border with Angola. His farm at Kingakati adjoins a game park teeming with imported giraffes, rhino and lions.

“What happens when the lizard becomes the crocodile?” is a Congolese adage. Could Mr Shadary, once in office, bare his teeth at Mr Kabila? If Mr Shadary were to follow the example of Angola’s president, João Lourenço, he could tell the taxman to take a hard look at his predecessor’s family. However, lacking a base of his own, most notably in the army or security services, Mr Shadary is unlikely to do so.