Tear gas in Kinshasa — Tshisekedi's third term runs through a locked clause

Article 70 of the 2006 constitution gives a president two five-year terms, and Article 220 puts the number and length of that mandate among the clauses no revision may touch — which is why the route on the table is a referendum on a new text rather than an amendment to this one, and why this is bigger than one man's third term. We wrote in July that 2026's ballot year is a referendum on how leaders leave; our Power block puts odds on it: of the 54 leaders we grade, 21 governed with a term limit in force, 11 moved or removed it, and only Olusegun Obasanjo was stopped outright — by his own Senate, in 2006. Our Scorecard read on Tshisekedi was written before this week and still fits: legitimacy and constitutional conduct are the two half-marks on a card of 2.5 out of 5. He has something to argue with — rule of law and control of corruption have climbed to the 68th percentile of African countries since 2019, above the continental median — but his democratic trajectory sits at P38 and rights and participation at P34, and the question we put to the minerals-for-security accords in August, who benefits, is harder to answer for a presidency negotiating its own extension. The real test is not a dialogue convened by ordinance two days before the police moved: it is whether a referendum ever gets a date, and whether the Court that unlocked the law is ever asked to rule on Article 220 itself.