Congo anti-riot police deploy at electoral commission before vote results

Anti-riot police with water cannon and armored vehicles surrounded Congo's electoral commission on Wednesday ahead of the delayed announcement of the results of the presidential election.

The tally could be announced later in the day after the commission (CENI) met all night and into the morning.

Police installed metal barriers and blocked traffic outside the electoral commission as it continued meetings that began late Tuesday to discuss the results compiled so far.

Police also took up positions along the city’s main boulevard, as Congolese fretted about possible violence amid suspicions that President Joseph Kabila’s government was negotiating a power-sharing deal with one opposition candidate.

The preliminary results of the December 30 vote had been expected on Sunday, but the commission indefinitely delayed the announcement, to the frustration and growing suspicion of many Congolese. Some said the delay is allowing manipulation in favor of the ruling party.

The elections would be Central African country’s first democratic transfer of power in its 59 years of independence, but a disputed result could trigger the kind of violence that erupted after the 2006 and 2011 elections and destabilize Congo’s volatile eastern borderlands.

A CENI source and a diplomat said they expected results to be announced later on Wednesday. Another diplomat, however, said that not all the vote tallying had been completed and that the announcement might have to wait until Thursday.

Kinshasa residents went about their normal activities, but some parents kept their children home from school. People were back on the streets too in the eastern city of Goma, which were deserted on Tuesday evening after a rumor spread that the announcement was imminent.

Kabila is due to leave office this month after 18 years in power - and two years after the official end of his mandate. He backed his former interior minister, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, in the election.

Shadary was competing against two main opposition candidates, businessman Martin Fayulu and Felix Tshisekedi, the president of Congo’s largest opposition party.

Tshisekedi’s camp, which says it expects to win, said on Tuesday that it had met with Kabila’s representatives to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, although Kabila’s camp denied any such meetings had occurred.