ADDIS ABABA, Jan 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The African Union (AU) has called on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) to postpone the release of its presidential election results.
The pan-African organisation says it has “serious doubts” about provisional results released last week.
Congo opposition candidate Martin Fayulu, center, leaves the Philadelphie Missionary Center after attending Sunday Mass in Kinshasa, Congo, Sunday Jan. 13, 2019. President elect Felix Tshisekedi was also scheduled to attend the service, but cancelled. Photo courtesy ofJerome Delay)
Opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi was declared the winner but another opponent of the current administration, Martin Fayulu, insists he won.
Final results are due on Friday.
A number of AU heads of state and government met in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday and released a statement about the disputed Dec 30 election.
“There were serious doubts on the conformity of the provisional results, as proclaimed by the National Independent Electoral Commission, with the votes cast,” it read.
“Accordingly, the [AU] called for the suspension of the proclamation of the final results of the elections,” it added.
Fayulu alleges that provisional winner Tshisekedi made a deal with the outgoing President Joseph Kabila.
Kabila has been in office for 18 years and the result, if confirmed, would create the first orderly transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.
The electoral commission said Tshisekedi had received 38.5% of the vote, compared to 34.7% for Fayulu. Ruling coalition candidate Emmanuel Shadary took 23.8%.
Fayulu filed an appeal in the Constitutional Court on Saturday demanding a manual recount of votes.
The declaration of Tshisekedi as winner has also been disputed by the influential Catholic Church which says it deployed 40,000 election monitors across the country.
International experts based in the US, and the French and German governments, have also raised doubts. — NNN-AGENCIES
