Re - DR Congo Elections
Cornelius Hamelberg
If the opposition was united behind a single candidate as was the case in Senegal a few years ago, then perhaps the results would have been a foregone conclusion.
When we read that “The U.S. embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo is warning Americans to leave the country, as Congolese officials prepare to announce election results” it can only mean that they have some advanced knowledge that all hell is going to break loose no matter which result is announced, i.e. if Kabila's crown prince is the loser by a narrow margin then the army is probably going to be called in...
Cornelius Hamelberg
In addition to the numerous voting “irregularities” ( the usual election fraud/ rigging) that has been reported , what to say about the fact that the overall results must still be incomplete since voting has been postponed in three opposition strongholds on absurd grounds such as “Ebola” and security challenges, although campaigning went on unimpeded in those very areas ? Na kufa ( they are killing us ...
Cornelius Hamelberg
I sent those posts an hour before the winner of the presidential elections was announced.
Here's the latest on DR Congo Elections
The Guardian's succinct postmortem : Tshisekedi's surprise victory rejected as 'electoral coup'
Surely, the Congo has not lost Patrice Lumumba forever?
The late Franklin Boukaka is still crying
Cornelius Hamelberg
Sweden's Dagens Nyheter reported the heavily rigged 6th of August 1983 Presidential election in Nigeria with this headline : A Triumph for Democracy !
Once again, it's another lesson learned. I have since talked to three DRC Congo friends about the results of the DRC presidential election and they are all happy. Still haven't managed to get hold of the most political one that I know here in Stockholm. So far what they're telling is that we should not believe everything that we see in print. But don't we know that already? Sure, the newspapers are not holy, there's the Gospels but there are no holy newspapers. Just ask Donald J. Trump. But in the case of the Congo election , right now, it's DR Congo presidential election: Church questions results . The Holy Roman Catholic Church to which half of the citizens of the DRC belong !
Next question : How reliable were the pre-election opinion polls that gave Martin Fayulu such a commanding lead over his opposition rival Étienne Tshisekedi's son Felix Tshisekedi and Kabila's crown prince Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary? Apparently, either not at all reliable or if reliable - even taking into consideration Fayulu as the new kid on the block with no name recognition, and the fact that on the whole the supporters of both
Moïse Katumbi and Jean Pierre Bemba who had been disqualified from contesting the presidential elections were going to transfer their votes to Tshisekedi, the only other credible explantation is that FT got more than his fair share of the votes cast.
My three Congolese friends are very happy above all , because if the delay in announcing the results was fear that the election had been heavily rigged on behalf of crown prince Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, as a result of which the gates of hell would have certainly been broken open...
Looking forward to the Nigerian Presidential Elections