DR Congo: Opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi wins presidential election

AP | Opposition leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi has been declared the winner of the long-delayed presidential election, the electoral commission announced early Thursday to the surprise of many.

Tshisekedi, who received more than 7 million votes, or 38 percent, had not been widely considered the leading candidate and is relatively untested. The son of late opposition leader Etienne, who pursued the presidency for many years, he startled Congolese shortly before the election by breaking away from an opposition effort to unite behind a single candidate.

Some observers have suggested that President Joseph Kabila’s government sought to make a deal as hopes faded for a win for ruling party candidate Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, who received more than 4 million votes, or 23 percent.

It was not immediately clear whether opposition candidate Martin Fayulu, who had pushed hard for Kabila to leave power and vowed to clean up Congo’s widespread corruption, will contest the results after leading in polling. The constitutional court has 14 days to validate them. Fayulu received more than 6 million votes, or 34 percent.

The election may enable DR Congo to achieve its first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence in 1960. Outgoing president, Kabila, who has been in office for 17 years, is barred from serving 3 consecutive terms, but during more than 2 years of election delays many Congolese feared he would find a way to stay in office.

“This is the coronation of a lifetime,” the deputy secretary-general of Tshisekedi’s party, Rubens Mikindo, said shortly after the announcement that his candidate had won, above the cheers at party headquarters. “This is the beginning of national reconciliation.”

Scores of people in the capital, Kinshasa, danced after the election results were announced long after midnight, but observers waited to see how other Congolese would respond, especially after Fayulu this week warned that the results were “not negotiable.”

Fayulu, who once tweeted that “When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn,” was backed by 2 popular opposition figures barred from running, former Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba and former governor Moise Katumbi. Fayulu, a former Exxon manager and Kinshasa lawmaker, accused the government of impeding his campaign by blocking flights and assaulting his supporters, which Kabila dismissed.