DR Congo court to examine election appeal from Tuesday

Tshisekedi’s spokesman, Vidiye Tshimanga, said his party, the UDPS, “will accept a recount if it is a decision by the Constitutional Court.”

“However, we are against a recount if it is imposed by foreign countries,” he told a press conference.

Constitutional law expert Sylvain-Patrick Lumu Mbaya said that a recount was certainly one of the options available to the court.

“The court may have doubts (about the result), and if so, it can take exceptional measures, including a recount,” he said.

However, suspicions about the court’s impartiality run deep in a country where Kabila’s influence is widespread.

Last April, two judges who were considered to be the most independent quit. As one of the successors, Kabila named a former legal advisor, Norbert Nkulu Kilombo.

– Troubled past –

The DRC’s political crisis erupted two years ago when Kabila refused to step down at the end of his constitutional term in office, sparking protests which were brutally repressed.

The vast, unstable country has never had a peaceful transition of power since gaining independence from Belgium in 1960.

It became a battlefield for two regional wars in 1996-97 and 1998-2003, and the last two presidential elections, in 2006 and 2011, were marked by bloody clashes.

The influential Roman Catholic Church, which says it deployed 40,000 observers to monitor the poll, has also dismissed the official outcome as not reflecting the true result.

But it has held back from saying who, in its opinion, was the victor.