Five opposition candidates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have rejected the extension of the elections and have called for a rerun.
Elections in Africa’s second-largest country were disrupted on Wednesday by delays in the delivery of voting materials in several places and equipment malfunctions. People also struggled to find their names in the registers, while violence caused chaos in other places.
Congolese election disputes are often the source of violent unrest with potentially far-reaching consequences.
The opposition candidates say that the DRC’s electoral law stipulates that elections should last for one day. And that the head of the electoral commission in the DRC does not have the power to extend this election.
As the SABC News correspondent reports from Kinshasa, candidates are calling it a sham election, they want new polls and a new team for the organisation of this election.
This has raised fears of violence across the country.
Second day of voting
Congo held a second day of voting on Thursday in a chaotic and in some areas violent general election – an unscheduled extension that some opposition candidates and observers say could open the results up to legal challenge.
The administration of President Felix Tshisekedi, who is seeking a second term, dismissed criticism of the vote and concerns about its credibility.
“We have had inclusive, peaceful, and transparent elections,” said Giscard Kusema of the presidency’s press team.
The vice-president of the CENI election commission said the electoral process was running much more smoothly on Thursday than the previous day and that provisional results would start to be released from Friday.
Chris Ocamringa reporting:
Opposition presidential candidate Moise Katumbi, whose team has been compiling its own vote count, said results so far showed him in the lead. He made the claim in a joint statement with opposition backers that also alleged widespread irregularities in the conduct of the vote.
The CENI’s decision to extend voting into Thursday at polling stations that failed to open on election day has been rejected by five other presidential candidates. They are jointly calling for a full rerun of the vote.
Congo’s powerful Roman Catholic church and the Symocel observer mission, which both deployed thousands of election monitors, have also questioned the move.
“The extension … could indeed disrupt the (electoral) process, especially from a legal standpoint,” Symocel coordinator Luc Lutala told reporters. -Additional reporting by Reuters
