DR Congo president admits 'mistakes' in polls

Violence before and after the elections has left at least 18 people killed across the country

The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo has conceded there were "mistakes" in last month's elections, but rejected the finding of the Carter Center international observer group that the results lacked credibility.

Joseph Kabila, who won re-election in the ballot held on November 28, said on Monday the "credibility of these elections cannot be put in doubt".

"Were there mistakes? Definitely, but [the US-based Carter Center] has definitely gone far beyond what was expected," Kabila told a news conference in the capital Kinshasa.

Results released by the election commission showed Kabila had won the vote with 49 per cent while Etienne Tshisekedi, the opposition leader and his main challenger, took 32 per cent.

The ballot, marred by deadly violence, was the second since the country's 1998-2003 civil war ended. The first election was held in 2006.

But the outcome was immediately rejected as fraudulent by Tshisekedi, with the Carter Center citing "impossibly high" turnout in Kabila strongholds and uncounted ballots in opposition bastions.

It said on Saturday the organisation of the ballot cast doubt on the reliability of the results.

Kabila, who came to power in 2001 after the assassination of his father Laurent, pointed to his own disappointing scores in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu as proof that the election process had been transparent.

'We don't have a crisis' He said Tshisekedi's self-declaration as poll winner was not a surprise.

"Am I uncomfortable with the results? Definitely not ... We wanted to score better in some provinces, especially in North and South Kivu. So we lost some and we won some," he said.

"We don't have a crisis in this country ... We're going to stay calm and continue with the day-to-day activities of the state," he said, reaffirming his confidence that the economy will see double-digit growth in the next two to three years.

Kabila's comments came as the Catholic archbishop of Kinshasa condemned election results.

"The results announced by the CENI [Independent National Electoral Commission] on December 9 comply with neither truth nor justice," Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo told journalists.

Monsengwo appealed to Tshisekedi and the other 10 defeated presidential candidates to take their grievances to the supreme court, a move Tshisekedi has rejected.

The archbishop called on the court, which is charged with hearing election disputes and declaring the official winner on December 17, to act impartially.

The court "is called by all Congolese people to say what is really right," he said.



Al jazeera