Kabila maintains lead in Congo's election
published: Thursday | August 10, 2006

President Joseph Kabila leaves the polling station with his family after voting in Kinshasa on Sunday, July 30. The people of Democratic Republic of Congo voted in their first free elections in 40 years, protected by the world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping force and hoping to end years of war and chaos. - REUTERS

KINSHASA, Congo (AP):

President Joseph Kabila maintained a wide lead Wednesday in Congo's historic elections as vote counting ground on, early results showed.

With only about four per cent of the roughly 20 million votes cast in the July 30 balloting so far counted and certified, Kabila's support was running at about 72 per cent, according to results released to The Associated Press.

In second place, with about 10 per cent of the 730,011 votes so far tallied, is Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader who is now one of Kabila's vice-presidents in the postwar, transitional administration arranging Congo's first multiparty vote in decades.

The remaining 18 per cent is divvied up among minor candidates in the field of 33 presidential aspirants. So far, eight voting district centres out of 62 have so far certified and publicly posted their results, the electoral commission release showed.

No official announcement of a winner is expected for days, with vote counting and certification proceeding slowly in the vast, impoverished and war-battered Central African nation. No results from the capital, Kinshasa, have yet been released.