DR Congo Election Battle Intensifies

Kabila, in power since 2001, was on Friday named the winner of the November 28 poll, but runner-up Etienne Tshisekedi immediately rejected the result and declared himself president.

Violent protests and looting erupted in Kinshasa after the announcement. Police said four people had died in the unrest Friday and Saturday. UN broadcaster Radio Okapi said six had died.

Election monitors from the Carter Center, a non-profit organisation founded by former US president Jimmy Carter, added momentum on Saturday to Tshisekedi’s refusal to accept the results, saying they “lack credibility”.

“Multiple locations… reported impossibly high rates of 99 to 100 percent voter turnout with all, or nearly all, votes going to incumbent President Joseph Kabila,” the group said in a statement.

“These and other observations point to mismanagement of the results process and compromise the integrity of the presidential election.”

The Carter Center said its observers gave a rating of “poor” to 40 percent of the 169 compilation centres where results were tabulated. It reported irregularities including the loss of 2,000 polling station results in Kinshasa, a Tshisekedi stro-nghold, and chaos in the counting process ranging from ballots piled on the floor and stepped on to results sheets soaked in rain then hung on sticks to dry.

“This assessment does not propose that the final order of candidates is necessarily different than announced by CENI, only that the results process is not credible,” it said.

The European Union and other international and local observers have also cited serious problems with the vote, ranging from disorganisation at polling stations to ballot box stuffing.

The election commission said Kabila had won 49 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Tshisekedi. Tshis-ekedi claimed his party’s own count based on results taken directly from polling stations showed he had in fact won with 54 percent.