Præsidentvalget i det enorme land i Afrikas hjerte gik stort set helt som ventet
President Joseph Kabila has won the election in DR Congo (tidl. Zaire), provisional results show according to BBC online Friday.
He obtained 49 per cent of the vote against 32 per cent for veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, the election commission chief said.
Mr Tshisekedi (78) has rejected the results and declared himself president, raising fears of violent protests.
DR Congo is rich in minerals such as gold, diamond and coltan, which is used in mobile phones. But years of conflict and mismanagement mean it recently came bottom of a survey of living standards around the world.
Riot police are patrolling the streets of the capital, Kinshasa, seen as an opposition stronghold in this huge country which is still recovering from years of conflict in which some four million people died.
The change from a two-round to a first-past-the-post presidential election, which Mr. Kabila promoted in a constitutional amendment earlier this year, succeeded in dividing the opposition.
But this means he is being re-elected with less than 50 per cent of the vote, amid widespread suspicion of electoral fraud (svindel), and with very little support in most of the country’s western provinces including the capital, Kinshasa.
Mr Kabila enjoys greater popularity in eastern areas, where his origins lie and where he is credited with helping to end the war.
Amid fears of a violent reaction to the results, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court this week warned all sides that engaging in electoral violence would not be a ticket to power but a ticket to The Hague.
The results still have to be ratified by the supreme court.
Mr Kabila, 40, has been president since 2001, following the assassination of his father, Laurent, who overthrew long-time ruler Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.
In 2006 he won the first elections since the end of a five-year conflict and is now due to be sworn in on 20 December for his second term.
As well as the presidential race, more than 18.000 candidates contested 500 parliamentary seats.
Election officials used helicopters from the UN peacekeeping mission to deliver material to remote parts of the country, which is two-thirds the size of Western Europe but with hardly any paved roads or railways.
The African Union and four other African observer missions said the polls had been “successful”. But the European Union observer mission said its preliminary findings showed that the polls were marred by “numerous irregularities, sometimes serious”.
