Missing Links, Day Two

The New York Times intimates dark times ahead: "Congo’s political temperature seems to be rising by the day."

The Observatoire des Medias Congolais has just issued a report highly critical of the Congolese media's coverage of the election.

None of the three main contenders for the presidency has updated his web page since yesterday, when Kabila and Kamerhe both published photos of themselves voting. (From the looks of it, Tshisekedi hasn't updated his page since 1992 [1].) Monusco hasn't put anything up today either.

The Catholics are calling for calm, but seem generally upbeat: "The Catholic national justice and peace commission, which had deployed 30,000 Congolese observers throughout the country, said that, by early Nov. 29, it had received reports from only 25 percent of the observers, most of whom did not have rapid means of communication. However, according to these initial reports, voter turnout was high, and people were voting with great enthusiasm, despite certain logistical and security problems."

Radio Okapi has a good overview of how the results will be tabulated. The results will be counted and posted at each polling site, before being transmitted to CENI, so the election won't be so easy to steal.

CENI--the Congolese electoral commission--says that it won't annul the election.

Tshisekedi has announced that he will accept the election results, regardless of the outcome.

France 24 apologizes to Tshisekedi for falsely accusing his supporters of raping women in eastern DRC.

The Observatoire, La Prosperite, and Le Potentiel all have editorials calling on the population to remain calm and peaceful while the vote is counted.

[1] In response to the comment below, what I mean is that it has the look and feel of a web page made in 1992, not that it hasn't been updated since then. On the other hand, the most recent update I saw was an announcement of Tshisekedi's visit to the US earlier this year, so it's clearly not the communication method of choice for the old Sphinx.