Another comment on PubliusPundit:
...The fact is, the paper doesn’t matter much. What matters are the facts on the ground.
A President, no matter what his official powers, is only commander of the armed forces so long as the armed forces allow him to be. In the US, we’ve managed to keep our armed forces in check and free of direct political aspiration. But in most of the world this isn’t the reality.
About the only thing that winning an election provides in a country like the Congo is a demonstration of your popular support or ability to game the system. It does not actually measure power. Oh, and it also allows you to levy taxes - again, only if you already have real power from sources other than the voting booth and a few scraps of paper.
IMO, a country like the Congo has a multiplicity of forces at play. It isn’t just two groups duking it out - although they did form two parties for the purpose of civil war. There were 30 candidates for President for a reason. In these situations, often the most stable and promising solution is to minimize the central power. Eliminate the standing army and the taxes that go with it. With a bi-polar society that would spell all out war, but with a multi-polar society accomodations will quickly be achieved. There will be no possibility of conquering everything and so things will calm down.
The multiplication of faction, as discussed by Madison in the Federalist Papers, is key to true stability.
See Chapter 6 of ReligiousLiberalism.org for more on this.