The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should know the winner next week of historic presidential elections, with incumbent Joseph Kabila expected to keep his job despite opposition allegations of fraud.
Two weeks after the vast Central African country’s first multiparty presidential and legislative elections in 46 years, Kabila has won 55% of votes among the one-fifth of ballots to have been counted, according to an Agence France-Presse count.
His main rival, Vice-President and former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, has 17,8 %, followed by former central bank governor Pierre Pay-Pay with 2,2%.
No figures were available from the capital, Kinshasa, where Kabila is not popular. Final nationwide results are due to be announced by August 20 at the latest.
”It would appear difficult for Bemba to get in front of Kabila,” said one diplomat, adding that the son of assassinated president Laurent Kabila could expect to benefit from a ”huge reservoir” of uncounted votes.
”The real question is whether he can win in the first round.”
At just 35 years of age, Kabila is Africa’s youngest head of state and few thought he would survive his time in office following the violent turmoil of the country’s recent past and the murder of his father in 2001.
But he has won over the Congolese and Western leaders and held together complex peace deals in the aftermath of DRC’s brutal 1998 to 2003 conflict, dubbed ”Africa’s World War”.
The war sucked in seven neighbours, claimed nearly four million lives and turned the country into a furnace of instability in the heart of the continent.
The elections are the culmination of a three-year peace process that saw the deployment of thousands of international peacekeepers as well as a special European Union rapid reaction force to secure the vote itself.
Official results are due to be announced on or before August 20 despite the arrest of five election officials for allegedly falsifying electoral documents and opposition complaints of ”massive irregularities”.
Apollinaire Malu Malu, head of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI), said the arrests represented ”no a threat to the [electoral] system”.
Meanwhile, 15 minor candidates in the election issued a statement on Friday complaining of the international community’s failure to act on alleged election fraud.
They said irregularities included tampering with polling documents and bribing voters, and accused international bodies overseeing the elections of a ”complicit silence”.
Among the signatories were two government ministers, Scientific Research Minister Gerard Kamanda and Catherine Nzuzi wa Mbombo, in charge of solidarity and humanitarian affairs.
The allegations, and ongoing sporadic violence in the volatile east of the country where a soldier was killed in fighting with suspected army deserters on Thursday, has raised fears of wider unrest.
”If there is no second round there’s the risk of a flare-up of violence in Kinshasa,” said another diplomat, who refused to be named.
The presidential election will go to a second round on October 29 unless Kabila or one of his 32 challengers wins 50% or more of votes cast in the first round.
Religious leaders appealed for calm on Saturday, urging citizens to ”show their maturity” as the vote count continues and condemning what they called ”incitement and political manipulation”.
A truce was signed on the eve of the vote with one of the rebel groups still fighting in the east near the border with Rwanda, which is watching the outcome of the vote closely after deposing two leaders in the DRC in the 1990s.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame helped rebels first topple Mobutu Sese Seko, a dandyish dictator who made the DRC a byword for corruption, and then Kabila’s father, Laurent.
The reason was their failure to flush out Hutu killers who were hiding in the eastern DRC after carrying out the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Kabila has managed to make peace with Kagame since he succeeded his assassinated father in 2001. — Sapa-AFP