The head of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s election commission on Friday said it was on track to release the full provisional results of the presidential vote by Sunday, Dec. 31, as originally planned.
Denis Kadima, the president of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), dismissed the opposition’s allegations of irregularities and fraud in the Dec. 20 election and said the results reflected the choices of the Congolese people.
“The results we are releasing reflect (people’s) choices,” Kadima said in an interview.
He also rejected the opposition’s calls for a full re-run of the election, saying they were “bad losers” who knew they had lost.
“We did everything with the necessary transparency,” he said.
According to a report by Reuters, the CENI has come under fire for its handling of the delay-plagued election, which was marred by logistical mishaps, malfunctioning voting machines, and violent incidents that held up voting in many places.
The main observer mission of Congo’s powerful Catholic Church and its Protestant Church questioned the legality of the CENI’s decision to extend the vote by a day in some areas.
The observer mission also urged the CENI to only publish results based on correctly consolidated tallies from local centers, and not to rely on some results from voting machines.
The election aimed to choose a successor to President Felix Tshisekedi, who is stepping down after 18 years in power, marking the first democratic transition of power in Congo’s history.
The election dispute threatens to further destabilize Congo, which is already grappling with widespread poverty and a security crisis in eastern areas. Contested results have fueled unrest in the past. Police forcibly dispersed a banned protest by the opposition on Wednesday, leaving several people wounded. The opposition has vowed to hold more protests.
Tshisekedi Leads The Race
The latest CENI preliminary results, updated on Friday, showed Tshisekedi in the lead with more than 72% of around 15.9 million votes counted so far.
CENI has not yet said how many of Congo’s 44 million registered voters participated. It has processed the results of 52,173 polling stations out of 75,969, according to its latest tally.
Some of the main challengers of Tshisekedi, who is running for a second term, are former prime minister Martin Fayulu, former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba, and former governor Moise Katumbi.
Fayulu, who is widely seen as the main rival to Tshisekedi, accused the CENI of manipulating the results in favor of the ruling party and denounced the election as a ‘masquerade’
He has called for a recount of the votes and the publication of the results from each polling station.
The authorities barred Bemba and Katumbi from running, but they have backed Fayulu and joined his call for a re-run of the election.
They have also accused the CENI of violating the constitution and the electoral law by extending the vote in some areas without consulting the other candidates or the constitutional court.
The opposition has also alleged that there was a pre-election deal between Tshisekedi and outgoing President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled Congo since 2001 and whose chosen successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, was widely expected to win.
Both Tshisekedi and Kabila have denied any such agreement.
The international community, including the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, and the United States, has called for calm and urged the CENI to ensure the credibility and transparency of the results.
They have also warned against any interference or violence that could undermine the democratic process and the stability of Congo and the region.
Despite the tensions and challenges, many Congolese hope that the election will pave the way for a peaceful and democratic transition of power in their country, which has never experienced one since its independence from Belgium in 1960.
Congo has suffered decades of dictatorship, civil wars, coups, and foreign interventions that have left millions dead and displaced.
Observers see the election as a historic opportunity to end the cycle of violence and instability, and to usher in a new era of development and prosperity for the resource-rich but impoverished nation.
