The results of the a July 30 election in the “Democratic Republic” of the Congo were announced on Monday. Nobody won an outright majority, but I will give you one guess as to what happened given that it has taken over two millions deaths to lead up to this point. That’s right, people started killing each other, as militias loyal to the top two presidential candidates attacking each others’ supporters.

There is an inherent flaw to the way this election has been carried out. They are bidding for the presidency, a position that in African skeleton democracies means protection for your clan and the ability to dominate all other clans, not to mention rob millions of dollars from the government. For the winner, this is a reason to breathe a sigh of relief and perhaps commit genocide just for insurance. For the loser,, well, it fear that the latter will do exactly just that. They are fighting for supremacy over scraps.

The presidency and the control that comes with it is an institution that has proven time and time again to have failed in Africa, as well as Latin America and Central Asia. Europe’s imperial legacy has given the African people the curse of the nation-state, arbitrarily forned, so that nations of people are split between different states or forced to live with historical enemies in a single state.

The Constitution of the Third Republic, which came into effect in February 2006, establishes a more decentralized federal system with regional parliaments, along with a prime minister that is responsible to the federal parliament. Yet a simple majority is needed to elect this prime minister, and the president remains commander in chief of the armed forces. The changes do not go far enough, and as evidenced by the fighting, nobody believes that these changes will translate into reality.

If these issues are to be solved, and if the bloodshed is to be stopped, then these nation-states must either be dissolved or new institutional configurations for democracy must be figured out in order to control the power of different clans and tribes. Western-style majoritarianism just doesn’t work. Lebanon has its consociational system which balances the different religious groups, why are not interesting configurations found for this battered country?… This is a step forward, but it may be many years before the right steps are learned and taken.