A few days before the elections, the opposition and civil society are worried about the risk of fraud and are getting organized. Several citizen movements have decided to launch their own observation mission using cell phones. One of these citizen missions is called “Kapita” (“Sentinel”, in Linguala and Swahili).
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With our special correspondent in Kinshasa, Alexandra Brangeon
Kapita organizers say they have mobilized 1,300 citizens through the civil society network. Volunteers who, election daywill take photos of the reports, the results displayed outside the polling stations, and centralize them in an application.
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The objective is to have a “parallel count” to that of the Céni, the independent national electoral commission, explains Mino Bopomi, national coordinator of the Filimbi movement. “ We will mobilize people who will vote and who will stay in front of the polling station waiting until the results are displayed and thus, they will be able to take captures which will be read and analyzed. This way, long before the CENI can make its provisional results public, we will already have an idea of what the expression through the ballot box will have been. “, he said.
A parallel count which is possible because for the first time, the Congolese electoral law obliges polling stations to display the minutes outside the offices.
Cenco, the confederation of Catholic churches, also plans to deploy 11,000 citizen observers, in addition to the 25,000 traditional observers, explains its secretary general, Monsignor Donatien Nshole. “ These will be people who will not need accreditation and whose task will be to take photos of the minutes and then send them to the traditional observers. », he explains.
The objective? Avoid the scenario of 2018, when the opposition and civil society contested the results of the Ceni without being able to provide sufficient proof.
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