DR Congo rebuked the African Union on Friday over its calls to suspend the announcement of final results from presidential elections, insisting that the Constitutional Court assessing the vote’s legality was impartial.
The court is urgently hearing an appeal over the outcome of the December 30 vote to choose a successor to long-serving President Joseph Kabila, with runner-up Martin Fayulu claiming he was cheated of victory.
“The court is independent, both of us and the African Union,” government spokesman Lambert Mende said.
“I don’t think it is the business of the government or even of the African Union to tell the court what it should do.”
At a summit in Addis Ababa, AU leaders announced late Thursday that they would dispatch envoys to Kinshasa in a bid to end the crisis.
AU commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat and Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, currently the AU chairman, are expected to fly in on Monday.
The African leaders said there were “serious doubts” about the vote’s provisional results.
They called for the announcement of the final results to be suspended — a matter currently in the hands of the Constitutional Court, which must issue a ruling ahead of the scheduled swearing-in of the next president on Tuesday.
