Presidential election - Preliminary result: 73.3 percent for Congo's president
According to the provisional results, incumbent Félix Tshisekedi has clearly won the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the electoral commission, the pro-Western politician received 13.2 million votes. That is 73.3 percent of the votes cast. The official final results will be announced by the Constitutional Court of Africa's second largest country.
Even before the preliminary results of the election on 20 December were announced, nine opposition candidates called for new elections on Sunday and declared that they would not recognize the results of the electoral commission. Demonstrations are expected in Kinshasa as well as in a number of other cities, particularly in the east of the country, in connection with the election.
Tshisekedi had been given the best chance in the election - partly because the opposition had not managed to agree on a joint candidate. At the beginning of his first term in office, he had announced that he wanted to transform the country into an African Germany. The businessman Moise Katumbi, considered the most promising opponent, and eight other candidates criticized irregularities in the election during a joint appearance on Sunday and called for new elections with an "independent electoral commission".
Around 44 million people were called to vote. The resource-rich Central African country, which is the size of Western Europe, has a total population of 100 million. Elections were also held for members of the national parliament and regional parliaments in the country's provinces as well as local representatives. However, in many polling stations it was not possible to vote on the actual election day due to missing voter lists, faulty voting machines or other problems, meaning that voting had to be extended at short notice and elections were held over several days.
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Source: www.stern.de
