afrol News, 15 November - Transitional President Joseph Kabila has been declared the winner of the first democratic elections in Congo Kinshasa (DRC) in 45 years. The electoral commission said Mr Kabila had 58.05 percent of the vote, while Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba won 41.9 percent. Mr Bemba's followers however claim the result is fraudulent.
Final results of the vote counting are not expected until Sunday, but the Congolese Independent Electoral Commission at a press conference in Kinshasa this evening said the provisional results of the 29 October vote spoke for themselves. With 100 percent of the votes counted, but some ballot papers needing to be double checked, President Kabila's lead was too clear to be challenged.
Electoral commission president Apollinaire Malu Malu said results from all of the vast country's 35.715 ballot stations had been counted and that the incumbent had turned out the clear winner. Only in the capital, Kinshasa, and in the northern stronghold of ex-rebel leader Bemba, Mr Kabila had gone on a clear defeat. In the rest of the country, President Kabila had secured a clear victory.
While recognising the right of Mr Bemba's followers to legally challenge the election outcome, Mr Malu Malu urged them to remain calm and peaceful. Several followers of the defeated candidate already have claimed the official results are manipulated in favour of the incumbent and have sworn to challenge the vote by all means.
The political office of Mr Bemba's "Union pour la Nation" (UpN) already yesterday cried foul and claimed to have received reports from members of the electoral commission that concluded that it was Mr Bemba who was leading the count. Some 52.5 percent of the 11,954,758 ballots cast were in favour of Mr Bemba, they claimed to know.
The election fraud claims by Mr Bemba's party have been forcefully rejected by all other sources. Mr Malu Malu has assured that the election process - while being a challenging logistical effort - has been free and fair. None of the few irregularities had been grave enough to influence the total outcome, he held.
Also foreign election observer missions have gone far in praising the electoral commission's work. The Carter Centre election observation mission today released a statement saying it was "confident the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission are consistent with the results obtained in the polling stations."
There had been "a strong measure of transparency that virtually eliminated the possibility of significant fraud after the ballots were counted," according to the Carter Centre. The election observers thus urged all election participants to "refrain from making hasty judgments and to remain patient until all appeals have been considered and the final results are announced."
Concerned by the statements of Mr Bemba's followers, also UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan today urged the two candidates to "avoid statements that could threaten the peaceful completion of the national election." In particular, Mr Annan advised Mr Bemba to "use the law rather than violence to pursue any challenges" to the official results.
The many warnings directed at Mr Bemba's party come after several outbreaks of violence between the followers of the two main candidates during the election period. To hinder the violence, the UN has deployed 17,000 troops - the world's largest peacekeeping force - and the European Union has deployed around 2,000 troops in Congo Kinshasa during the election process. Many of these soon are to be pulled out.
Incumbent President Kabila, who has yet to comment the election results, has been favourite to win the Congolese presidential polls all along. In particular his good rating at the first poll round - where he got 45 percent of the votes compared to Mr Bemba's 20 percent - gave a clear indication he would finally win.
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