Opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi has been declared the provisional winner of last month’s presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with almost 39 percent of the vote.
Mr Tshisekedi, who’s leader of the country’s largest opposition party, told cheering supporters that he would serve as president of all Congolese.
But the man who had led the opinion polls, Martin Fayulu, has rejected the result, calling it an electoral coup.
He asked where Mr Tshisekedi’s votes had come from and called on election observers, including the Roman Catholic Church, to publish the real results.
If Tshisekedi’s victory is confirmed in the next 10 days by the constitutional court, he will become the first leader to take power at the ballot box since Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who was toppled in a coup less than three months after independence in 1960 and killed four months later.
