DRC: Tshisekedi’s landslide victory dismissed by opposition as ‘sham’

Felix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has won a landslide victory, according to provisional results announced by the country’s election commission, which has secured him a second term in a vote opposition has dismissed as a “sham”.
The announcement that the 60-year-old Tshisekedi won re-election with more than 70% of the vote comes amid demands from the opposition and some civil society groups for the vote to be rerun due to massive logistical problems that put the validity of the outcome into question. “I have been re-elected president of all Congolese,” Tshisekedi told cheering supporters. “It’s in this spirit of openness that I will exercise this second mandate.” Moise Katumbi, a wealthy businessman, football club owner and former provincial governor, was the runner-up with about 18% of the vote, while Martin Fayulu, a former oil company executive, came second with 5% and Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, a physician renowned for treating women brutalized by sexual violence in eastern DRC, received less than 1%.
Nine opposition candidates — Mukwege, Fayulu and Katumbi — have signed a declaration rejecting what they termed a “sham” election and called for a re-run. Fayulu told reporters in Kinshasa the results “are a masquerade. This must not be accepted”. More than 40 million citizens out of the 112 million inhabitants of the second-largest country in Africa were registered to vote on 20 December for president, as well as for national and regional lawmakers and municipal councillors. According to one Catholic-Protestant observation mission, its observers have ”documented numerous cases of irregularities susceptible to have affected the integrity of the vote”. Voting was officially extended by a day to account for problems, and continued for days afterwards in remote areas, according to observers. The US embassy in Kinshasa has called on the authorities to investigate all allegations of fraud and said those who dispute the result should avoid a violent confrontation and use the legal system.