Call for protest action after disputed election in DRC

TENSION is mounting on the streets of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as opposition leader Martin Fayulu called on his supporters to organise protests after the constitutional court yesterday rejected his legal challenge to Felix Tshisekedi being declared the official winner of the December 30 presidential elections. Fayulu has also appealed to the international community not to recognise the poll results.

The court said Fayulu had failed to prove that the election commission had announced false results, the BBC reported yesterday. However, the opposition leader hit back and called for peaceful protests across the country.

“With this ruling, the constitutional court has defied the Congolese people, the AU, and the whole international community,” he said after the ruling was made.

Fayulu argues that Tshisekedi made a power-sharing deal with outgoing president Joseph Kabila, an accusation that Tshisekedi and his supporters deny.

The opposition leader’s assertion has been supported by the Catholic Church, which had 40000 observers at polling stations across the country, Belgium, France, and a number of political analysts.

Congo’s Berci and France’s Ipsos for the Congo Research Group in December, and actual voting count data by the Catholic Episcopal Commission, also pointed to a solid and statistically robust victory by Fayulu.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region, a 12-member body including Kinshasa allies Angola and Republic of Congo, also originally expressed “great concern” about the provisional results of the long-anticipated poll.

However, after yesterday’s court ruling the SADC congratulated Tshisekedi and called on the Congolese to support the president-