Two days after the announcement of the preliminary results of the presidential election in the Congo, the defeated opposition candidate Martin Fayulu has lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court. "We will not accept this for a moment," said Fayulu on Saturday in front of the courthouse in Kinshasa. You can not fabricate results behind closed doors.
The opposition alliance Lamuka had said Friday, citing its own election observers, Fayulu won the election with just over 60 percent of the vote. Félix Tshisekedi, also an opposition candidate, who was declared winner by the electoral commission, only got close to 19 percent of the vote.
Lamuka had asked the electoral commission to publish the results of each polling station in order to verify the authenticity of the overall result. The opposition and the Catholic Church had observers in most polling stations. The Episcopal Conference also said Thursday that the official result was not consistent with the results recorded by its 40,000 on-site election observers.
"Constitutional Court Must End This Injustice"
"Tshisekedi was declared the winner on special terms, and the Constitutional Court must put an end to this injustice," said Fayulu. On Twitter, he said that members of the republican guard of outgoing head of state Joseph Kabila had invaded his property on Saturday to prevent him from coming to the Constitutional Court.
After the announcement of the election victory of Tshisekedi rumors had arisen, according to which this could owe his triumph a secret deal with the corrupt Kabila. This was not allowed to compete in the election.
The candidate of the governing party, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, came to only four million votes according to the electoral commission. Tshisekedi got more than seven million of the 18 million votes cast, Fayulu a good six million.
Swearing scheduled for January 22nd
The preliminary final result must be confirmed on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court. The new president is to be sworn in on January 22. Previously, the 18th of January had been called as an appointment.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most unstable countries in Africa. Since the end of Belgian colonial rule in 1960, there has never been a peaceful change of power. According to the constitution, the presidential election should have taken place two years ago. However, since Kabila refused to resign as scheduled after two terms, the elections were postponed several times. Protests were bloodily defeated.
The Congo is six times the size of Germany and has about 80 million inhabitants. Despite abundant minerals such as cobalt, copper and gold, the Central African state is one of the poorest countries in the world.