This Wednesday, December 20, nearly 44 million Congolese were called to general elections to elect various government officials. Citizens cast their votes among more than 18 candidates for the presidency, which current President Félix Tshisekedi is also seeking. Election day was marked by delays in the opening of several polling stations, operational problems and violence in several regions of the country.
First change: 12/20/2023 – 7:59 p.m
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The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo went to the polls. This Wednesday, polling stations opened their doors – sometimes hours late – for a parliamentary election in which current President Félix Tshisekedi wants to reprise his position on the executive committee for the second time.
The opening of the first polling station nationwide, scheduled for 6:00 a.m. (local time), took place in the eastern city of Kisangani. The day there proceeded as normal, a reality very different from that of many other voting centers. Without going any further: Voting began around 9:00 a.m. in the capital Kinshasa
“I have been here since 6:30 a.m. and noticed that the materials arrived very late. The agents of Ceni – Independent National Electoral Commission – have just arrived,” Carine Dibo, one of the voters from the municipality of Kalamu, told the EFE agency. .
And opening polling stations in Africa's second-largest country is no easy task. The lack of government presence in some remote areas, the poor condition of roads or insecurity make it difficult to set up, open and monitor centers. Problems that Ceni herself recognized and promised to “take care of.”
A woman casts her vote in Kinshasa on December 20, 2023. © John Wessels / AFP
“Offices that open late make up for lost time. This means that if the center opens at 10:00 a.m., you are entitled to 11 hours of voting, assuming there are people who need it. When the material arrives.” “People will still vote even if we have to leave until the next day. The principle is that all Congolese can vote,” said Denis Kadima, president of Ceni, during an intervention on the national channel “RTNC”.
The government declared a public holiday this Wednesday, closed borders and suspended domestic flights. Almost 44 million Congolese were called to the elections to choose around 100,000 positions – including between national and provincial legislators or council members.
For the first time, Congolese citizens residing in South Africa, Belgium, the United States, Canada and France were allowed to vote.
The specter of violence and election fraud
The situation in the African country is tense. The armed conflict in the east, ravaged by rebel militias for decades, overshadowed much of the election campaign. On December 15, two parliamentary candidates were murdered as part of electoral violence in the country that was condemned by human rights groups. HH.
The problem is that in some provinces the holding of elections has been directly ruled out. This is the case in the areas of Masisi and Rutshuru, in whose province it was not possible to hold the vote due to violence, as well as in the Kwamouth area in the western province of Mai-Ndombe, which is affected by intra-community disputes over the land.
A problem that only increases the specter of electoral fraud. The opposition, civil society and religious observers complained about a lack of electoral transparency and pointed to problems with voter lists and identity cards.
A woman searches for her name at a polling station in Goma, in the restive east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on December 20, 2023. © Moses Sawasawa / AP
For this reason, several observation missions with almost 25,000 election observers were deployed on December 20th. The largest, CENCO-ECC – a coalition of Catholic and Protestant churches – promised on Tuesday to carry out a “parallel count”.
“31.37% of polling stations were not open this morning, and 45.1% had malfunctions with electronic voting machines (EDVs). In addition, entry to the polling stations was prohibited in 9.8% of polling stations. Election observers and violence were recorded in 7.84% of centers, 5.88%, were destroyed,” the organization noted in its report on Wednesday.
Although the counting of votes was scheduled to begin immediately after the polls closed – scheduled for 5:00 p.m. local time – the results are not expected for a few days.
With Portal, AFP and EFE