Wednesday saw the Democratic Republic of the Congo hold presidential and legislative elections following a tumultuous campaign characterised by accusations of electoral violence, fraud, and logistical difficulties that may have prevented many voters from casting ballots.
Election disputes in the DRC frequently lead to violent unrest with potentially dire repercussions. DRC is the world’s leading producer of cobalt, a component required for batteries in the green transition, and the third-largest producer of copper worldwide.
Voter lists were not released, voting materials had not reached polling places, and delays were reported in a number of the rebel-infested eastern DRC towns as well as in the country’s capital, Kinshasa.
The runner-up in the contentious 2018 presidential election, Martin Fayulu, declared, “It is a total chaos.” While the vote was well-organized in the capital’s affluent Gombe district, where Fayulu cast his ballot, he claimed that throughout the rest of the nation, it was not.
According to British news agency Reuters witnesses, some voters in the eastern cities of Goma and Beni had trouble finding their names on voter lists that were only made available at their polling places on Wednesday morning. A voting centre was vandalised and kits were destroyed in Bunia, also in eastern Congo, according to a Reuters reporter. Security forces then opened fire to drive out protestors.
Calls for rerun of election
Together, the five opposition presidential candidates from Congo have demanded a repeat of the nation’s general elections, citing the election commission’s decision to extend the voting period as unconstitutional.
Election officials announced late on Wednesday that voting would resume the next day in locations where voters were unable to cast ballots.
Long-standing concerns were that the four simultaneous elections for the president, national and regional legislators, and local council members in the mineral-rich but impoverished central African nation might degenerate into chaos.
