Eight of the main opposition leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) today demanded the annulment of the December 20 general elections, after the annulment of 82 municipal and legislative candidacies due to fraud.
The country’s Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) announced on Friday the annulment of 82 candidacies – including, for example, that of the governor of Kinshasa, Gentiny Ngobila – after concluding that there was evidence of having “committed fraud, incited to electoral violence” or even “hijacked voting machines”.
Election results have been postponed indefinitely.
With regard to the presidential elections, the electoral commission validated the victory of the current President, Félix Tshisekedi, although the Constitutional Court will analyze, on Monday, two complaints.
One of the complaints was filed by the opposition candidate, Théodore Ngoy, who alleged serious irregularities in the electoral process, and the other came from a private individual called David Mpala, who did not make public the reason for his appeal.
The candidates demanded the total annulment of the elections because, in the opinion of one of the opposition leaders, Martin Fayulu, “a simple analysis of the list of canceled candidacies shows that fraud has been present throughout the national territory”.
The candidates also expressed surprise at the fact that the electoral commission only declared fraud in the legislative and municipal elections when all the votes were gathered in a single ballot.
On the other hand, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, warned that the days following the elections were marked by “increased hate speech and ethnic speech” in the country, particularly in the Kivu provinces. North and South Kivu.
“Hateful rhetoric is abhorrent and only deepens tension and violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo itself, in addition to putting regional security at risk,” Türk said in a statement.