Fayulu won DRC poll, data analysis shows
Martin Fayulu was the clear winner of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) presidential elections in December, a Financial Times analysis of two separate collections of voting data shows, contradicting claims from authorities that rival contender Felix Tshisekedi had won the historic vote.
The analysis points to huge fraud in the first change of power since Joseph Kabila took over the presidency of the mineral-rich Central African nation almost 18 years ago. It is likely to embolden critics of Kabila who suspect the Congolese leader is seeking to cling to power through a deal with Tshisekedi.
According to a trove of election data seen by the Financial Times and representing 86% of total votes cast across the country, Fayulu won 59.4% of the vote. Rival opposition candidate Tshisekedi, who was declared the surprise winner last week, finished second with 19%, according to this set of data.
A Financial Times analysis of a separate set of voting results that was collected manually by the Catholic Church’s 40,000 observers and representing 43% of turnout, shows that Fayulu secured 62.8% of this sample of votes. The results gathered across 28,733 polling points match almost perfectly the more extensive set of official results seen by the Financial Times.
The larger set of data, a spreadsheet containing more than 49,000 records, contains the true electronically fed results that authorities have sought to conceal, according to a person with direct knowledge of how the data was obtained.
The person, who is close to Fayulu’s camp, asked for anonymity because the data contradicts the electoral commission’s official declaration.
The figures provided are electronic tallies from 62,716 voting machines across the country and were obtained from the electoral commission’s central database before the results were announced last week, the person said.
A Financial Times analysis of the tallies shows a near-perfect correlation with the church’s partial results — with a correlation coefficient ranging from 0.976 to 0.991 for each of the three leading candidates (1 representing a perfect match).
The new figures support the church’s assertion last week that the electoral commission published false results.
“It is extremely difficult to believe … that tens of thousands of lines of data could have been fabricated on short notice to produce these results without signs of tampering,” said Jason Stearns, director of the Congo Research Group at the Centre on International Co-operation, a New York think-tank, which also reviewed the leaked data.
“This highlights the need for a full, scrupulous audit of the election tallies,” he said.
The electoral commission denied its results are fraudulent. Barnabé Kikaya Bin Karubi, chief diplomatic adviser to Kabila, said it will be up to the constitutional court to decide on the validity of the election.
Gilbert Kankonde Nkashama, a spokesperson for Tshisekedi, said it is impossible that Fayulu had won the election and questioned the independence of the Catholic Church.
Fayulu aims to overturn the result in the constitutional court, although its impartiality has been questioned.
DRC has held only four elections since independence in 1960 and has never before had a transfer of power through the ballot box. Kabila was due to step down in 2016 but elections were delayed until street protests and regional pressure forced him to hold the vote.
Kabila’s ruling coalition had sought to retain control of the presidency through Emmanuel Shadary, his chosen successor. Fayulu’s supporters have alleged that when voters failed to come out for Shadary in sufficient numbers — he finished third — the election commission was told to install Tshisekedi instead.
According to the results that have been seen by the Financial Times, Fayulu received more than 9.3-million votes, 3-million more than the electoral commission announced, and won in 19 of the DRC’s 26 provinces, including the capital, Kinshasa, and the eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. In contrast, Tshisekedi scored 3-million votes, the data indicates, 4.1-million fewer than the electoral commission showed, while Shadary secured 2.9-million votes, or 1.5-million votes fewer than the published tally.
The data show the results of 15.7-million out of the 18.3-million votes that were cast on election day, but the missing votes could not have resulted in a different winner. Malfunctions in voting machines meant that not all vote tallies were transmitted to the central database, the person with knowledge of the database said.
The Financial Times analysis also found no significant evidence that the data deviated from Benford’s law, a statistical test commonly used to identify fraudulent data. /©