Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s guards fought gun battles with forces loyal to election challenger Jean-Pierre Bemba in the capital Kinshasa on Sunday, as poll results showed the two would have to enter a run-off.
Kabila, with 44,81%, and Bemba with 20,03% of votes from the historic July 30 election, will face each other in a second round, elections chief Apollinaire Malu Malu said on state television.
Malu Malu made his announcement at the TV station after gun battles, in which one person was reported killed, forced him to abandon plans to announce the results at the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) press centre.
Soon after the announcement, vollies of red tracer fire roared down the main boulevard where Kabila’s presidential guards and forces loyal to Bemba had been fighting.
Military sources said it was anti-aircraft ammunition but it was unclear who was firing.
”There is a lot of confusion but some of Bemba’s protection detail appear to have clashed with the presidential guard,” said a senior official with the United Nations force.
White UN armoured personnel carriers (APCs) deployed as gunfire and heavier explosions echoed through the city centre.
Government spokesperson Henri Mova Sakanyi accused Bemba’s forces of starting the fighting, some of which took place near the headquarters of Bemba’s MLC party.
”Bemba’s soldiers started shooting at policemen. We don’t known what the reason is. Maybe they were trying to block publication of the election result,” he said.
He said three policemen had been wounded.
But Bemba’s MLC party, which sprang from the Ugandan-backed rebel force he led in the war, accused Kabila’s Republican Guard of attacking its headquarters in the city on Sunday afternoon.
”The Republican Guard started shooting at us for no reason. They killed one of our men,” an MLC spokesperson told Reuters. Three more MLC members had been wounded, he said.
MLC sources said Bemba’s TV station had been forced off air.
‘Thank you for putting me first’
The violence forced Malu Malu to board an APC and head to state television in a long convoy of 13 UN armoured vehicles and armed Congolese police in pickups to announce the results.
He said turnout across the mineral-rich Central African state, which is the size of Western Europe, was 70% of the 25-million voters registered.
Antoine Gizenga, a veteran opposition politician in his 80s, came in third place with 13,06% of the vote. The results remain provisional until confirmed by the Supreme Court.
”I thank all you who chose me. Thank you for putting me first. This is a victory for the people. I have no doubt you will help me consolidate this victory in the second round,” Kabila told state television after the announcement.
The July 30 presidential and parliamentary elections were the first free, open polls for more than 40 years and are meant to offer the huge country a fresh start after a decade of violence driven partly by greed for its mineral riches.
The world’s largest peacekeeping force — 17 000 UN peacekeepers, backed by more than 1 000 European soldiers — is overseeing a peace process culminating in polls that cost $450-million and presented huge logistical and security problems.
Voting passed relatively smoothly, with millions voting peacefully despite insecurity in the east, where rebels still roam, and threats of unrest in towns hostile to Kabila.
But the vote has highlighted a split between Kabila’s native Swahili-speaking east, which voted heavily for the 35-year-old president, and the Lingala-speaking west which rejected him, including the teeming city of Kinshasa where Kabila is disliked and seen by many as a foreign-backed stooge. – Reuters