CONGO BRACES FOR DRC RESULTS
…As commission meets overnight
KINSHASA
- Democratic Republic of Congo’s electoral commission met all night and into Wednesday morning ahead of an announcement of results from the presidential election.
Riot police were deployed in front of the commission headquarters in the capital Kinshasa and along the city’s main boulevard, as Congo braced for possible violence amid accusations of vote fraud and suspicions that the government was negotiating a power-sharing deal with one opposition candidate.
The December 30 poll was meant to lead to the country’s first democratic transfer of power in its 59 years of independence, but a disputed result could trigger the kind of violence that erupted after the 2006 and 2011 elections and destabilise Congo’s volatile eastern borderlands.
The electoral commission (CENI) announced on Tuesday evening that it had initiated “a series of evaluation meetings and deliberations, at the end of which it will proceed to the publication of provisional results from the presidential election.”
A CENI source and a diplomat said they expected results to be announced anytime. Another diplomat, however, said that not all the vote tallying had been completed and that the announcement might have to wait until probably today.
President Joseph Kabila is due to leave office this month after 18 years in power and backed his former interior minister, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, in the election.
Shadary was competing against two main opposition candidates, businessman Martin Fayulu and Felix Tshisekedi, the president of Congo’s largest opposition party.
Tshisekedi’s camp, which says it expects to win, said on Tuesday that it had met with Kabila’s representatives to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, although Kabila’s camp denied any such meetings had occurred.
Supporters of Fayulu, who had a healthy pre-election poll lead, have voiced suspicions that Kabila may be looking to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with Tshisekedi if Shadary loses.
On Tuesday, Fayulu and six other presidential candidates issued a statement saying that “the electoral results cannot be negotiated and under no circumstances will we or the Congolese people accept such results.”
Amid growing concerns about the delay, Zambia's President Edgar Lungu and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa met yesterday in South Africa to discuss the situation in DR Congo.
Meanwhile, as the country anxiously awaits the outcome of the presidential election, many in the capital, Kinshasa, say they are convinced that the opposition won and that the delay in announcing results is allowing manipulation in favour of the ruling party.