Dr Congo Rules Out Repeat of Presidential Poll Rejected by Opposition

The government of Congo has refused opposition calls for a rerun of disputed elections, as the main observer mission reported numerous irregularities that could undermine some results.

Provisional results issued so far from the December 20 general election show President Felix Tshisekedi with a commanding lead.

But his opponents have demanded they be annulled, citing widespread issues with the roll-out and tabulation of the vote.

The team of Moise Katumbi, one of Tshisekedi’s main challengers, has ruled out using legal channels to contest results, asserting that state institutions were committed to tipping the vote in the president’s favor. The Ceni denies this.

The Ceni is due to release further provisional presidential results ahead of a December 31 deadline.

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Latest showed Tshisekedi well ahead of his 18 challengers, with just over 76% of around 12.5 million votes counted so far.

The CENI did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Symocel, a local civil society observer mission, wrote a letter to the CENI on December 26 to flag reports from several provinces of CENI agents mishandling sensitive election materials and conducting election operations outside official centers.

The rate of this phenomenon … is so high and could irreversibly distort the results of the elections that your institution is gradually announcing, it said.

Symocel’s coordinator Luc Lutala confirmed the letter’s authenticity on Wednesday and told Reuters there are as many problems with the election’s roll-out as with the counting of the vote.

In its report, the CENCO-ECC mission urged the CENI to publish only results based on correctly consolidated tallies from local centers.