Congo's Bemba files legal challenge to poll defeat

Congolese presidential hopeful Jean-Pierre Bemba filed a Supreme Court challenge yesterday to provisional presidential run-off results showing a victory for incumbent Joseph Kabila.

United Nations peacekeepers and armed Congolese police mounted a heavy security presence around the Supreme Court building in downtown Kinshasa, near where soldiers loyal to the two candidates fought bloody battles in August and a week ago.

Dozens of Bemba supporters gathered outside the concrete court building, waving Bemba campaign posters and chanting "Bemba, president" and anti-Kabila slogans.

A spokesman for Bemba said the complaint included seven points challenging the provisional result, which was announced by the electoral commission last Wednesday.

The provisional figures gave 58.05 per cent of votes from an October 29 run-off to Kabila, against 41.95 per cent for Bemba, but have yet to be confirmed by the Supreme Court.

The main complaint concerns votes cast under a special dispensation to allow people such as electoral workers and party representatives to vote in the polling station where they were working on election day rather than where they were registered.

The challenge also said results had been falsified, party representatives were blocked from polling stations where they were meant to observe the vote, and ballot boxes were stuffed.

It alleged campaigning had been unbalanced because Kabila's forces had destroyed Bemba's helicopter, the spokesman said.

In the event the United Nations made a helicopter available to each candidate, but neither travelled much outside the capital during the muted campaign, citing concerns over security after battles between their forces in August.

The complaint also questioned high voter turnout figures in eastern Congo, which is Kabila's home and which overwhelmingly supported him in both rounds of voting.

Bemba has broad support in Kinshasa and the rest of western Congo, which speaks his Lingala tongue as opposed to the Swahili spoken by Kabila and most other easterners.