Regional powers call emergency summit as new evidence emerges Congo election was rigged

Our Foreign Staff
New evidence suggests Martin Fayulu was the real winner of last month's election - REUTERS
New evidence suggests Martin Fayulu was the real winner of last month's election - REUTERS

Southern African government have called an emergency summit to discuss the disputed election in the Democratic Republic of Congo as further evidence emerged that the official results were falsified to hand a fraudulent victory to Felix Tshisekedi over Martin Fayulu.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), which include the DRC, will meet on Thursday in Addis Ababa  a diplomatic adviser to outgoing president Joseph Kabila said on Sunday, Reuters reported.

It was not immediately clear who else from Congo would be present or what action, if any, the bloc might decide to take.

Analysis of two sets of voting data by the Financial Times show that Mr Fayulu was the rightful winner of the election to replace outgoing president Joseph Kabila, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Data covering 86 per cent of total votes cast across the country showed Mr Fayulu won 59.4 per cent of the vote while Mr Tshisekedi, who was declared the surprise winner on Thursday, took 19 percent, the paper reported.

The findings tally with data gathered by 40,000 observers working for the Catholic Church, which gave Mr Fayulu a 62.8 percent victory among a sample accounting for 43 percent of votes cast.

They will reinforce a claim of electoral fraud that Mr Fayulu's campaign filed on Saturday.

Congo's electoral commission initially announced that Mr Tshisekedi, a marginal opposition leader had won with 38.57 percent of more than 18 million ballots cast.

The announcement contradicted consistent polling that suggested Mr Tshisekedi would win the election.

Mr Fayulu immediately denounced the result, calling it “rigged, fabricated and invented." Amid claims that Mr Kabila and Mr Tshisekedi had reached a secret deal to share power, he claimed that he had been denied power by an "electoral coup."

On Friday his campaign released its own analysis saying he had taken 61.51 percent of the vote. His supporters say authorities rigged the result in a deal to protect members of Mr Kabila's outgoing administration and maintain his influence over security forces.

The December 30 election had been intended as Congo's first democratic transfer of power in six decades, but instead threatens to reawaken violence in the huge and tumultuous nation where millions have died during civil wars since the 1990s.