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Johannesburg. Congo’s presidential election was so fraud-riddled nobody knows for sure who won. Two months later, the international community that helped pay for the vote now seems content to simply keep the incumbent in power and continue to turn a profit.

The November ballot was considered a vital stepping stone on the road to democracy for Congo, sub-Saharan Africa’s largest nation. It was only the second democratic vote in a country that suffered decades of Western-backed military dictatorship and civil war, the most deadly conflict since World War II, and still is wracked by fighting in the east.

Congo is believed to hold 40 percent of the world’s cobalt, nearly a third of all diamonds and 70 percent of the coltan needed in cellphones, according to the US Geological Survey. It also has massive amounts of tin, gold, copper and enough water for hydroelectricity to light up the entire continent.

With incumbent President Joseph Kabila starting his new term in office even though it’s unclear if he actually won re-election, business and pragmatism now appear to be trumping democracy.

“The elections were deeply flawed, marred by massive fraud, intimidation and corruption,” said analyst Jason Stearns, formerly head of the UN experts panel on Congo. The international community, he said, “doesn’t care enough to resort to” cutting off aid and calling for new polls.

Congo’s sprawling borders reach nine other African countries, and conflict in this vast nation also threatens to spark instability in its neighbors. But the international community hasn’t forcefully called for Kabila to step down, as countries did when other incumbent leaders clung to power after elections in Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe.

Theodore Tefron, a Congo expert at Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa, said that while the international community believed Kabila had problems, it felt veteran opposition presidential candidate Etienne Tshisekedi was an unpredictable force who could be worse.

“Western diplomats and businessmen prefer to have Mr. Kabila in power,” Tefron said. “They know who Kabila is and how to deal with him, even though he is not the perfect partner.”

Tshisekedi formed the nation’s first opposition party in 1982 and boycotted 2006 elections. Some find the 79-year-old stubborn and irascible and seem unwilling to fight for him.

“Whether the elections as we know was flawed, the future of Congo is not with Tshisekedi. His time has come and passed,” said US Democratic legislator Donald Payne of New Jersey, who has traveled to Africa for decades and is the ranking member of the subcommittee on Africa.

Congo’s election dispute hasn’t sparked the kind of widespread violence seen after the 2006 vote, when soldiers belonging to the two top contenders fired rockets and automatic gunfire in downtown Kinshasa, the capital. Soldiers and police have broken up any pro-Tshisekedi protests. It’s not known how many people have been killed, detained or disappeared. Most estimates put the number of dead from the conflicts that have raged since 1998 at about 4.5 million.

This time, Tshisekedi’s supporters haven’t staged the kind of protests seen after disputed elections elsewhere on the continent, and he doesn’t have an army of rebels who could take on Congo’s military. So without the threat of civil war erupting, the international community isn’t prepared to use military force as it did in Ivory Coast, though Congo has the biggest UN mission in the world with 20,000 troops.

Kabila took power in Congo at the age of 30 after his father’s assassination in 2001. He was lauded for calling the first democratic election in 40 years in 2006, but he changed the constitution limiting presidential candidates to an age of 40 so he could run at 35.

Kabila’s forces have been holding Tshisekedi under virtual house arrest since he declared that he had won the election.

Kabila has other options among international partners, said Jennifer Cooke, Africa director of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies,. He shocked the West when he signed a $9 billion barter deal with China. He offered up mineral resources in exchange for roads, railways, bridges, hospitals and other things that would bring more infrastructure than in 60 years of independence and dominance of Western-backed warlords and transnational corporations.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank persuaded him to lower the deal to $6 billion in exchange for $11 billion of debt relief.

Associated Press