Summary:

• President Felix Tshisekedi is set to be confirmed for re-election in the Democratic Republic of Congo after securing 72.4% of the counted votes in the recent two-day election, amid opposition claims of irregularities and challenges to the electoral process.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is this Sunday expected to confirm the re-election of President Felix Tshisekedi. 

This followed a two-day election exercise held on December 20-21.

By Sunday morning, CENI had counted 16.3 million votes of which Tshisekedi, who succeeded President Joseph Kabila in 2019, had garnered 11.8m votes. 

This represents 72.4% of the total vote count. 

Wealthy Katanga businessman Moise Katumbi comes second with 3 million votes representing 18% of the total votes counted so far. 

DRC has a voting population of 40 million people. However, it appears less than 20 million participated in the December 20 election exercise.

Opposition strongman Martin Fayulu is in third position with 871,000 votes (5.3%). 

Other candidates have less than 300,000 votes each. 

Opposition protests 

Opposition leaders including Moise Katumbi and Martin Fayulu have challenged the integrity of the electoral process, saying it was marred by irregularities and delayed deployment of voting materials. 

Ex DRC President Joseph Kabila’s political party, the Common Front for Congo (FCC),  said the December 20 elections were characterised by many logistical challenges which disenfranchised millions of voters and urged its supporters to challenge the election outcome. 

However, CENI said in exceptional cases where the Voting and Counting Stations did not open at all, the body extended the voting exercise for another 24 hours.

The election came against the backdrop of the M23 conflict in eastern DRC which many observers thought would undermine Tshisekedi’s presidential bid.

However, Tshisekedi projected strength and commitment to ending the M23 rebellion by ordering modern weapons and threatening war with Rwanda.  

Polls also indicated growing faith in Tshisekedi’s leadership especially for introducing free primary education. 

Ahead of the elections, a poll conducted by GeoPoll said the majority of the voters were willing to support a second term for President Felix Tshisekedi and saw no alternative candidate deserving of their vote.

According to the poll, “most Congolese people are thoroughly dissatisfied with the state of the country, with unemployment, insecurity, infrastructure and food prices the most mentioned challenges.”

However, the poll showed, “Perceptions have not, however, deteriorated further in the past year – in fact there are signs of marginal improvement, particularly in response to the ongoing implementation of universal free education.”

The opposition remained divided and were unable to align in time for the polls.