The vote was initially scheduled for 2016 but was postponed multiple times by President Joseph Kabila.
KINSHASA, Congo — After more than two years of delays, Congo went to the polls Sunday in an election that holds both the promise of a democratic transition and the potential for large-scale violence should the results be seen as unfair.
By the time most polls closed, alarming irregularities were reported from across the country.
Millions of voters were met with nonexistent voter rolls and hundreds of malfunctioning or missing voting machines, and hundreds of cases of election observers saying they were barred from polling stations.
Vote counting began late Sunday night. The election commission says provisional results will be announced within a week and definitive ones by Jan. 15.
The election presents this enormous country with its first chance at a peaceful, democratic transfer of power since its independence from Belgium in 1960. But for some voters in the Limete neighborhood, an opposition stronghold, many polling stations hadn’t received voters rolls six hours after polls opened, and a few didn’t have them by 5 p.m., their scheduled closing time.
“It’s a comedy,” said Kisoka Kimbenze around midday, after giving up and beginning to walk home.
