The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced on Tuesday that a demonstration planned by the opposition on Wednesday to protest against the “irregularities” they claim marred the 20-21 December elections would be banned.<\/p>\n
“The aim of tomorrow’s demonstration is to undermine the electoral process, and the government of the Republic cannot accept that”, Interior Minister Peter Kazadi told the press.<\/p>\n
“I can assure you that there will be no such march”, he insisted.<\/p>\n
In a letter made public on Saturday, five opposition presidential candidates informed the governor of Kinshasa of their intention to organise a march on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“We will be protesting against the irregularities observed during the voting process”, they wrote, describing the ballot as a “sham election”.<\/p>\n
These opponents include Martin Fayulu, the unsuccessful candidate in the 2018 election, and Denis Mukwege, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with women victims of wartime rape.<\/p>\n
The camp of another opposition candidate, the former governor of the southeastern mining region of Katanga, Mo\u00efse Katumbi, has called for the elections to be cancelled outright.<\/p>\n
As early as 20 December, the opposition had described the elections as “total chaos”.<\/p>\n
Nearly 44 million voters, out of a population of around 100 million, were called upon last Wednesday to elect their president, national and provincial deputies and local councillors. Due to a number of logistical problems, the quadruple ballot was officially extended by one day, and continued until Christmas in some remote areas.<\/p>\n
The still very partial results of the presidential election released by the Electoral Commission put the incumbent president, F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi, well ahead, with more than 80% of the 1.8 million votes counted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced on Tuesday that a demonstration planned by the opposition on Wednesday to protest against the “irregularities” they claim marred the 20-21 December elections would be banned. “The aim of tomorrow’s demonstration is to undermine the electoral process, and the government of the Republic cannot accept that”, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"AFP","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,33],"tags":[72,1461,359,1529,1555],"class_list":["post-10316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-politics","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-denis-mukwege","tag-kinshasa","tag-martin-fayulu","tag-moise-katumbi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}