KINSHASA, the Democratic Republic of Congo — In Congo, they are calling it “le glissement.”

The term, meaning “the slide” in French, describes the prospect of elections slipping away as President Joseph Kabila maneuvers to extend his 16-year rule, which has given him and his coterie vast riches but done little for most ordinary citizens.

The deeply unpopular Mr. Kabila, 46, was supposed to step down last Dec. 20 at the end of his second term, as constitutionally mandated. But he refused, setting off a profound political and economic crisis whose resolution could turn chaotic and violent.

“The president needs to go,” Fiston Ntumba, 27, a motorcycle-taxi driver, said in Kinshasa, the capital. “By not going, he is seeking war. So we’ve decided to go to war, too.”

An implosion of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country almost the size of Western Europe, could spill into and involve some of the nine countries it borders. In the late 1990s, neighboring countries were sucked into what became known as the Great War of Africa, which resulted in several million deaths.