Félix Tshisekedi
Félix Tshisekedi has been president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since January 2019, the son of Étienne Tshisekedi, who had led the opposition to Mobutu and Kabila for thirty-five years and died in Brussels in 2017 without the presidency. He took the office in the country's first peaceful transfer, declared the winner of the election of December 2018 by the commission in a result the Catholic Church's observers said belonged to Fayulu. It was under a deal with Kabila that gave Kabila's coalition the parliament and the government for two years, until Tshisekedi broke it in 2020 by buying the deputies and replacing the prime minister, the constitutional court and the army's commanders. The years since have been the free primary schooling that put four million children in class. There was the state of siege in Ituri and North Kivu from 2021 under military governors that did not end the killing. There was the return of the M23 with Rwanda's army behind it, which took Goma in January 2025 and Bukavu in February. There was the minerals deal offered to Trump for security, the Washington agreement with Rwanda in June 2025 and the Doha talks with the M23 that changed nothing on the ground. There was the election of December 2023 that he won with seventy-three per cent in a vote the opposition rejected, and the talk of a third term that the constitution forbids. He was born in Kinshasa in 1963, spent his youth in Belgium, where his father was in exile and he worked as a pizza deliverer and a telemarketer, a life his opponents cite. He took the party, the UDPS, on his father's death after a quarrel with the old man's lieutenants. The presidency has also been the growth on cobalt and copper, with the Chinese contract renegotiated in 2024 for seven billion dollars of infrastructure. There were the corruption cases against his own chief of staff, convicted in 2021, and a first lady's foundation and a family in the ministries that the country has noticed. He has said that Kagame is a Hitler, and that he will not go to war with Rwanda, and has done neither, while the east is administered from Kigali. He has also said the constitution was written by foreigners and should be changed. A commission is at work on it.
- Lived: 1963 CE – ?
- Nationality: Congolese
- Roles: president, politician
