DR Congo church questions legality of 'shambolic' polls
This video grab made from an AFPTV video taken on December 20, 2023 shows incumbent President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Felix Tshisekedi casting his ballot at the St Georges Kitambo polling station in Kinshasa.
What you need to know:
Election officials struggled to get voting materials to polling booths on time, leaving some people unable to cast ballots.
Voting was officially extended by a day to account for problems, but continued for days afterwards in remote areas.
Church leaders in Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday highlighted "numerous cases of irregularities" during the central African nation's recent vote, which was extended over several days due to bureaucratic disarray.
At a news conference in the capital Kinshasa, an election-observation mission run by the Catholic Church and Protestant churches also raised questions about the legality of the shambolic voting process.
The mission noted "numerous cases of irregularities likely to affect the integrity of the results of the various ballots in certain places," said Donatien Nshole, the head of the country's Catholic episcopal conference.
Some 44 million people were registered to vote on December 20 in elections to choose a president, national and regional lawmakers and municipal councillors.
Contravened electoral laws
But election officials struggled to get voting materials to polling booths on time, leaving some people unable to cast ballots.
Voting was officially extended by a day to account for problems, but continued for days afterwards in remote areas.
The Catholic-Protestant observation mission, in a preliminary report released on Thursday, suggested that officially extending the vote by one day contravened electoral laws.
Some people were also still casting ballots through to December 27, according to the mission, which urged the DRC's electoral commission to clarify the status of those votes.
The DRC is one of the world's poorest countries despite its rich mineral reserves.
Preliminary vote results
The country, whose size is roughly equivalent to the continental western Europe's, also lacks basic infrastructure.
Nshole, at the news conference, urged the electoral commission to break down preliminary vote results polling booth by polling booth.
He added that "one candidate stood out from the rest, accounting for more than half of all votes cast," without offering a name.
Partial results released by the electoral commission on Wednesday evening showed incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi well ahead, with about 77 percent of the some 9.3 million ballots counted so far.
The 60-year-old, who came to office in January 2019, is running for a second five-year term.
