KINSHASA, Congo — The confusion surrounding Congo’s historic presidential election deepened a day after the vote, as both opposition and ruling parties hinted at victory despite a lack of official results.
Sunday’s polls were marred by widespread irregularities and delays, both before and during the actual voting. On Monday, Internet connection in the capital was interrupted throughout the day, a development the opposition said was a tactic to suppress news about results.
Congo’s election commission has promised provisional results by Jan. 6, but political parties appear to be collecting their own tallies.
On Sunday night, Kikaya bin Karubi, an adviser to President Joseph Kabila who is also a spokesman for Kabila’s preferred successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, told reporters that “there is absolutely no way Shadary can lose.”
In a message sent via Twitter to The Washington Post, opposition front-runner Martin Fayulu said: “We are seeing clear results in our favor throughout the country. Should the collection of regular results continue, there is very little doubt about the outcome of the election; the people have massively voted for change through me. The Internet was just shut down to stop the spread of the truth, just like in 2011.”
Telecommunications were shut down in the aftermath of elections in December 2011. At the time, the government said it was to stop the spread of fake results before the electoral commission made its official announcement.
Disputes after election results in 2006 and 2011 resulted in unrest, but only sporadic episodes of election-related violence have been reported since Sunday’s vote.
Vital Kamerhe, campaign manager for opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi, told Reuters news agency that early counting showed his candidate and Fayulu even, with 40 percent of the vote each.
The presidential election in this vast and mineral-rich country in the heart of Africa was delayed for two years and unfolded Sunday amid reports of alarming irregularities.
Thousands of voters were met with missing voter rolls and hundreds of malfunctioning or missing voting machines. In some cases, election observers said they were barred from polling stations, according to the Catholic Church’s observer mission.
[Congo’s election may not be fair, but its rural poor hope it will bring change]
Developments in the lead-up to the vote also contributed to a lack of public trust in its integrity. Just four days ago, voting was postponed until March in three cities because of ethnic unrest and an Ebola outbreak that has been spreading for four months. Because the presidential election will be decided in January, the move disenfranchises more than 1.2 million voters.
Shadary, the president’s chosen successor, is not a household name in Congo, and his low profile has been read by many diplomats and analysts as purposeful — a way for Kabila to indicate he will continue to hold the reins should Shadary win. Kabila has strongly denied those rumors.
According to polls released Friday, nearly half the country trusts Fayulu to bring change. He has risen from relative obscurity as an ExxonMobil company manager to lead the Lamuka coalition. The word “lamuka” roughly translates as “wake up.”
Fayulu has the support of two regional heavyweights, one of whom is Jean-Pierre Bemba, previously a militia leader who was recently acquitted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering his soldiers to commit war crimes.
A second opposition coalition, led by Tshisekedi, has teamed up — to the consternation of many of his supporters — with Kabila’s former campaign manager.
While Fayulu and Tshisekedi made public statements condemning the disorganization of the vote, they did not indicate whether they saw it as illegitimate.
Whoever wins will inherit the leadership of a country with vast potential wealth in mining reserves, agriculture and hydropower, but one racked by ethnic and political violence that has particularly affected the regions of Kasai and North Kivu. The potential for the rapid expansion of the world’s second-largest Ebola outbreak has also caused worry far beyond Congo’s borders.
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