Police alert as DRC poll results expected to be announced
RIOT police were sent to the electoral commission’s headquarters in Kinshasa yesterday before the expected announcement of a result in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s presidential election, a vote the opposition said was marred by fraud.
Activist groups urged people to “be ready to massively take to the streets” if results don’t match “the truth of the ballot boxes”. Pre-election polls gave businessman Martin Fayulu a healthy lead but his supporters believed President Joseph Kabila planned to rig the vote in favour of his hand-picked candidate Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, or alternatively to forge a power-sharing pact with Felix Tshisekedi, the head of the largest opposition party.
Any widespread perception that the election had been stolen could set off a destabilising cycle of unrest, repeating violence that followed elections in 2006 and 2011, many Congolese fear.
The election commission (CENI) said it had held what it called a series of “evaluation meetings and deliberations”, after which it would “proceed to the publication of provisional results from the presidential election”.
“We don’t want people to die when they announce the results, blood to be spilled,” said Kinshasa resident Ohn Kabamba. “We are fed up, we are tired and we are waiting for a peaceful announcement which will allow us to rejoice rather than cry.” Abraham Tumba, said: “If the CENI announces the true results… it will be calm but if not, I don’t know what will happen.”
Kabila had wanted to hand over to Shadary when he stood down this month after 18 years in power – two years after the end of his mandate.
But polls suggested that the former interior minister was trailing both Tshisekedi and frontrunner Fayulu ahead of the December 30 poll, a contest that was meant to result in the first democratic transfer of power in Congo’s 59 years of independence.
The Roman Catholic Church, which helped monitor the poll, has said there was a clear winner fromdata compiled by its 40 000 observers deployed to all polling stations. The church has urged the commission to announce accurate results. Congo’s ruling party called the church’s announcement “anarchist”.
The electoral commission blamed the delay in releasing results on opposition parties’ insistence that they be counted by hand and not by voting machines, which Congo used for the first time.