(4 Minutes Read)
A Belgian IT expert was present in Kinshasa to support the European mission observing the Congolese elections and was reported to have committed suicide. He is alleged to have jumped from the 12th floor of a hotel in the DRC capital Kinshasa
A Belgian IT expert was present in Kinshasa to support the European mission observing the Congolese elections and was reported to have committed suicide. He is alleged to have jumped from the 12th floor of a hotel in the DRC capital Kinshasa. An investigation is underway to unearth the real reasons for the death. The IT expert was on a short-term mission to Kinshasa as a part of the exercise to oversee the election.
The European Union deployed a reduced mission of eight observers in Kinshasa for the general elections held this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It had originally planned a larger mission of some fifty observers, to be deployed throughout the country. But it gave up after the Congolese authorities refused to allow it to use its satellite equipment. www.trendsnafrica.com has run a report on the refusal of DRC, which forced the EU to truncate the number of people in the mission. In the mission, there were only eight observers.
The EU had specified on December 7 that this reduced mission would carry out a technical analysis of the electoral process and submit a report. Scheduled for December 20, the general elections (presidential, legislative, provincial, and local) have been extended, officially by a day or more in some remote areas of the vast Central African country, due to numerous logistical problems.
In the meantime, the Archbishop of Kinshasa called for restraint in his Christmas Mass Sunday evening, following what he described as the gigantic organized disorder of last week’s general election. Massive delays and bureaucratic chaos marred elections to choose the president, lawmakers for national and provincial assemblies, and local councilors.
Election officials struggled to transport voting materials to polling stations on time. Some stations could not open at all and voting had to be extended into the following day. He also referred to video images showing a woman attacked for having voted for the opposition.
Read Also:
https://trendsnafrica.com/drc-election-results-postal-votes-indicate-return-of-felix-tshisekedi/
https://trendsnafrica.com/authorities-claim-drc-elections-successful-refutes-opposition/
Around 44 million people in the nation of 100 million were registered to vote, with more than 100,000 candidates running for various positions. President Felix Tshisekedi, 60, ran for re-election against 18 opposition candidates. Many of them have denounced how the election was run, some of them accusing the authorities of massive electoral fraud.
