Army on alert as DRC awaits results

President Joseph Kabila, in power since 2001, looks on track for another five-year term, having run against a divided opposition field of 10 candidates in the single-round race.
He led top rival Etienne Tshisekedi by 49 percent to 33 percent in partial results announced late on Tuesday, with results from 89 percent of polling centres counted.

The election commission said late on Wednesday the count was more than 90 percent complete and that it expected to finish the job in “a few hours”.
The conflict-prone country has been on edge since last week’s vote which was preceded by clashes between police and opposition supporters in Kinshasa.
Police have been out in force in the capital and some 20 000 soldiers are on standby at military bases with security forces seemingly determined to quash any opposition demonstrations before they could start.

According to the UN election observers yesterday, there were reports of light skirmishes across the city.
In the area of Ngiri Ngiri, local residents barricaded the road and local police officers were called in to intervene. No casualties were reported.
Many residents have chosen to remain at home, leaving the centre of the city virtually empty.

UN and diplomatic staff from a number of embassies have been urged to be prudent when travelling during the day and urged to remain indoors at night.
But while the central business district has shut down as fears grow of clashes following the release of election results, the city remains alive at the edges.
Outside the headquarters of Tshisekedi’s party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), police in riot gear fired teargas whenever a group of people appeared to be forming.

The UDPS said it would “tolerate” the result delay, but reiterated its criticism of the vote count and called for results to be released for every polling centre. UDPS secretary general Jacquemin Shabani called the issuing of partial results “biased, opaque and irresponsible”.
The UK-based Human Rights Watch has said at least 18 civilians were killed in election-related violence last month, mostly shot dead by Kabila’s presidential guard as it put down a Tshisekedi rally in Kinshasa.

The elections are only the second since back-to-back wars between 1996 and 2003 in a country which sits at the bottom of the UN’s development index despite a wealth of natural resources including cobalt, copper, diamonds and gold.
Meanwhile, the main opposition party welcomed a delay in election results on Wednesday, saying it would allow time to make the vote more credible, as relative calm returned to the country’s capital.

Britain, France and the United States have called on the election commission to announce results by polling station to improve transparency. The body has promised to do so for the remaining 10 percent of the votes that have yet to be counted.
The opposition has rejected the figures repeatedly as “fantasy” but welcomed the delay.

“This delay is the search for truth, it’s not a deliberate act,” said Remy Masamba, a spokesman for Tshisekedi’s UDPS party. “We think the international community has taken hold of the situation and started to push for more transparency, a minimum of credibility.”

London, Washington and Paris have pushed for results to be published by individual polling station so parties and observers can compare them with the figures they collected on voting day.
“We are pressing the electoral commission to publish polling station by polling station the results so any necessary appeals by those taking part can take place,” Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s secretary of state for international development, told parliament. The French foreign ministry followed suit. — Al Jazeera.