Tshisekedi signs the referendum law that could open the way to a third term

A signature on Monday, an announcement in the night

President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo has signed into law a measure that eases the way to a referendum on constitutional change, a step the opposition condemns as an attempt to hold on to power beyond his second term. Law No. 26/045, dated 9 November 2026, was announced in an ordinance read on national television overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, and it entered into force immediately.

The law sets out how referendums can be proposed, organised and challenged in court, replacing the referendum law of 22 June 2005. Its most consequential provision is the breadth of what voters can be asked: not only amendments to existing provisions, but, in circumstances described as an absolute necessity, a draft for an entirely new constitution. Tshisekedi, 63, has been in power since January 2019 and was re-elected in December 2023; under the current constitution he must step down when his second five-year term ends in late 2028. The law changes none of that by itself; and that distinction, between a mechanism and an outcome, is where the whole argument now sits.

What does the new law actually change?

The text runs to eight chapters, covering how a referendum is initiated and called, the rules of the campaign, the role of witnesses, observers and journalists, the conduct of the vote, the proclamation of results, legal disputes and penalties. A referendum may be initiated by the president, by the government after deliberation in the Council of Ministers, by half of the members of each chamber of parliament, or by citizens through a petition of 250,000 signatures.

The bill, introduced by lawmaker Paul-Gaspard Ngondankoy, first passed in June. The Constitutional Court then reviewed it and sent it back for revision, objecting to provisions that would have let the president call a referendum on any issue deemed of fundamental importance. After 13 articles were reformulated, the National Assembly adopted the text on 23 October by 346 votes to 1, and the Senate approved it on 1 November, with all 78 senators voting in favour. The constitutional arithmetic is the heart of the dispute: Article 70 limits presidents to two five-year terms, Article 220 expressly prohibits amendments affecting the number or duration of those terms, and the new law leans instead on Article 5, which vests sovereignty in the people. Tshisekedi has denied seeking a third term, but at a rare news conference in early May he said: “If people want me to have a third term, I will accept.” He also warned in May that elections due in late 2028 may not go ahead as scheduled if the conflict in the east continues and North and South Kivu remain under rebel control.

No date, no question, and no settled answer on Article 220

No referendum has been announced. There is no date, no question, and no draft constitution on the table. That absence matters: everything being argued about this week concerns a mechanism, and the mechanism only becomes a political fact when a question is actually put to voters.

The central legal question is unresolved. While Article 220 protects presidential term limits against amendment, the legislation raises the possibility of replacing the constitution altogether, and whether such a replacement could lawfully remove those protections remains disputed; the law itself does not settle it, and the Constitutional Court has not ruled on the replacement route. Nor is it clear what the opposition will do first: the Coalition Article 64, known as C64, has condemned any third term, any constitutional change and any postponement of the 2028 elections, but whether its challenge comes first in the courts, on the streets or in parliament is not yet visible.

Two years before an election, the rules of the game are moving

Term limits are the load-bearing wall of the settlement that ended Congo’s transition. The 2006 constitution was written to make sure no president could rewrite the rules of his own succession, and Article 220 was the lock. A law that creates a lawful-looking route around the lock, even one that has not been used, changes the incentives for everyone in Kinshasa, two years before voters are due to choose a successor.

The stakes extend beyond the capital. The Democratic Republic of Congo holds the world’s largest cobalt reserves and a copper sector the energy transition depends on, and investors price political risk into every long-term contract. The country’s factbook profile records a state whose mineral wealth has rarely translated into institutional stability; our earlier reporting on the cobalt sector and the conflict that surrounds it shows how tightly the mining economy and the eastern war are bound together. Across Africa, term-limit debates have become the most reliable early warning of democratic backsliding; and what Kinshasa decides about Article 220 will be read far beyond Congo.

Five dimensions, one hinge: who decides what the people are asked

Through the Bureau’s five dimensions, the law is a hinge, not a verdict. Geopolitically, it lands in a country at war in its east, where the reformed M23 movement, now led, according to AFP, by Tshisekedi’s predecessor Joseph Kabila, has vowed to put an end to what it calls tyranny, by force if needed. A constitutional fight in Kinshasa and an armed challenge in the east are two fronts of the same succession question. Our reporting on Kabila and the M23 movement and on the political-military front he built around it is the essential background.

Economically, the law touches the world’s most important cobalt supply; investors do not need a third term to lose confidence, and a two-year constitutional argument is enough. Demographically, the electorate that would vote in any referendum is young and impatient, and it has already watched one president stay two years past his mandate before leaving. Historically, Congo has never had a clean test of Article 220, because no president has yet tried the replacement route. The hinge is the question itself: a referendum asks what the president chooses to ask, and until a question exists, the law is potential energy. The moment one is published, it becomes the most important sentence in Congolese politics.

What the referendum law sets in motion

The first consequence is mobilisation. C64, the coalition built to stop a third term, now has a text to campaign against and a timetable, the 2028 elections, to defend, and its condemnation of any postponement puts it on a collision course with Tshisekedi’s May warning. The second is litigation: the Constitutional Court forced revisions once already, and any decree calling a referendum on a new constitution will be challenged. The third is leverage for the armed east, which gains from every month Kinshasa spends arguing about its own rules. The fourth is investor caution in the mining sector, where constitutional stability is priced into every deal. The fifth is precedent: if the replacement route works in Kinshasa, incumbents elsewhere on the continent will study it closely.

What happens between now and 2028?

Five things decide the story from here: any decree calling a referendum, with its date and its question; the Constitutional Court’s answer when the replacement route is challenged; the C64 coalition’s campaign and whether protests spread beyond the east; the security situation in North and South Kivu, which determines whether a national vote, or the 2028 elections, can physically happen; and the electoral commission’s calendar, which formally still stands. Until one of those moves, the law is a loaded question with no question attached.