Zimpapers Logo

KINSHASA/JOHANNESBURG – Presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s have been postponed for a week.

The elections were scheduled to take place on Sunday, December 23.

The Independent National Election Commission (CENI) announced the formal decision.

On Wednesday, there was speculation that the elections would be postponed after a warehouse blaze destroyed most of the voting machines needed for the capital Kinshasa.

Ethnic violence has also erupted in the country amid elections.

President Joseph Kabila is expected to step down after nearly 18 years in power.

According to an AFP report, a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections said Thursday that the national election commission had confirmed the long-delayed vote would be postponed again.

Theodore Ngoy, one of 21 candidates vying to succeed President Kabila, claimed CENI had informed him the poll was being postponed “for technical reasons.”

“CENI says that it is technically unable to organise the December 23 elections,” he told AFPTV.

“We are going to meet in the light of this information,” Ngoy said.

On Wednesday, a senior source in CENI said the panel would order a one-week postponement after a warehouse fire destroyed thousands of electronic voting machines earmarked for Kinshasa, the nation’s capital.

CENI chief Corneille Nangaa met in parliament Thursday with Prime Minister Bruno Tshibala and other candidates, ahead of a scheduled press conference.

But opposition leaders immediately voiced their anger about any further postponement to the much-troubled vote.

“No delay can be justified,” said Martin Fayulu, one of two opposition front-runners. (President) Kabila and Nangaa would bear “full responsibility for this charade,” he said.

His statement was also signed by two heavyweights who have been barred from contesting the election -the exiled former governor of Katanga, Moise Katumbi, and former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba.

The postponement provides the latest twist in a saga that has gripped Africa’s second biggest country — and arguably its most volatile — for more than two years.

The DRC has never experienced a peaceful transition of power since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

Since 1996, it has experienced two major wars that left millions of dead, and two ongoing conflicts in the centre and east of the country that have caused hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

Fears of another bloodbath have haunted the nation after it was plunged into a political crisis in 2016 over President Kabila’s future.

In power since 2001 after succeeding his assassinated father, President Kabila (47), was due to step down after reaching the end of his constitution-limited two terms in office.

But he stayed on, invoking a caretaker clause in the constitution that enables a president to stay in office until his or her successor is elected.

The elections were postponed until the end of 2017 under a deal brokered by the powerful Catholic church, and then again until 2018.

On Thursday, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Fatou Bensouda, said the situation in the DRC posed “the risk of escalating violence that could lead to the commission of grave crimes.” – eNCA/AFP/Herald Reporter