Two opponents of Congolese President Joseph Kabila jointly lead a race to replace him in an election due in December, according to a public opinion poll released on Tuesday.
Millionaire businessman Moise Katumbi, a former governor of the country’s copper-producing region who says he will return from a two-year exile on Friday, would receive 19 percent of the vote, as would Felix Tshisekedi, who leads Congo’s largest opposition party, the poll showed.
The poll, conducted by the Congo Research Group at New York University and Congolese polling firm BERCI, also shows that 62 percent of people do not trust the electoral commission to conduct a free and fair election, due to be held on December 23.
Kabila is barred by term limits from standing for a fresh term in the election but has yet to publicly commit to stepping down. Some of his allies are pushing a legal argument they say allows him to run again.
The deadline to declare candidacies is August 8. The United States and France as well as other countries including neighbour Angola have expressed fears that a Kabila candidacy could plunge Democratic Republic of Congo into chaos.
Dozens of people have been killed by security forces in the past two years during protests against repeated election delays and memories remain fresh of catastrophic civil wars around the turn of the century in which millions died.
Ends/Enca