The African Union says there are serious doubts over the results of December’s presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo and has called on the country’s constitutional court to halt plans to rule on the outcome.
The shock announcement late on Thursday followed a statement earlier in the day from a smaller group of heads of state from southern Africa that had expressed support for Congo’s electoral process and warned other foreign governments against intervening.
The unprecedented action from the African Union follows a Financial Times analysis of leaked polling data on Tuesday that pointed to huge electoral fraud. According to that analysis, opposition leader Martin Fayulu was the clear winner of last month’s vote while Felix Tshisekedi, the rival opposition candidate who was declared the victor, should have finished a distant second.
“The Heads of State and Government attending the meeting concluded that there were serious doubts on the conformity of the provisional results, as proclaimed by the National Independent Electoral Commission, with the votes cast,” the AU statement said. “Accordingly, the Heads of State and Government called for the suspension of the proclamation of the final results of the elections.”
The group, which included the African members of the UN Security Council and representatives from at least six regional bodies, said it would urgently dispatch a high-level delegation to Congo to find a solution to “the post-electoral crisis in the country”.
The strong action by the African leaders is likely to encourage similar statements from other foreign governments that had criticised the poll but had been reluctant to weigh in without African support.
Mr Fayulu has challenged the election results at the constitutional court but until now few observers believed that the body, which was set up by outgoing president Joseph Kabila, would rule in his favour.
“The African Union publicly stating that there are serious doubts about the veracity of a member’s announced election results and calling for a suspension of the certification process is new territory,” said a senior western diplomat. “Even couched in diplomatic language the communiqué is a bombshell.”
The robust statement sets up a confrontation between the Congolese and the African heads of states in the coming days and will make it almost impossible for the constitutional court to proceed with the validation of Mr Tshisekedi’s victory without first completing a thorough public investigation.
The announcement from the meeting chaired by Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president and African Union chairperson, is starkly different from the position taken by the smaller Southern African Development Community earlier in the day.
“We believe that the situation in the DRC has been managed and handled well and international constitutional processes are ongoing,” the SADC said. “Any electoral grievances must be addressed in line with the DRC constitution and relevant electoral laws,” it added.
Representatives from SADC — an inter-governmental group of 16 African countries including Congo — also participated in the wider African Union meeting and it is not clear whether they changed their position or were over-ruled.
“The African Union traditionally defers to the subregion. But here it practically contradicted SADC’s much blander stance, intervening in an electoral dispute of a member state,” said Jason Stearns, a director of the Congo Research Group at the Center on International Cooperation, a New York think-tank.
