Heavily armed riot police were deployed at the electoral commission headquarters in Kinshasa on Wednesday amid fears of a disputed result in a Democratic Republic of Congo presidential election marked by accusations of vote fraud.

The tally could be announced later in the day after the commission met all night and into the morning.

Police also took up positions along the city’s main boulevard, as Congolese fretted about possible violence amid suspicions that the government was negotiating a power-sharing deal with one opposition candidate.

The December 30 poll was meant to lead to the vast Central African country’s first democratic transfer of power in its 59 years of independence, but a disputed result could trigger the kind of violence that erupted after the 2006 and 2011 elections and destabilise Congo’s volatile eastern borderlands.

The commission (CENI) announced on Tuesday evening it had initiated “a series of evaluation meetings and deliberations, at the end of which it will proceed to the publication of provisional results from the presidential election”.

A CENI source and a diplomat said they expected results to be announced later on Wednesday. Another diplomat, however, said that not all the vote tallying had been completed and that the announcement might have to wait until Thursday.

Domestic election observers say they witnessed serious irregularities on election day and during vote tallying, although a regional observer mission said the election went “relatively well”.

– Reuters