KINSHASA, Congo ? The coalition of parties supporting Congo's president has won two-thirds of legislative seats, officials said Friday in a belated announcement of partial results for the mineral-rich nation's chaotic November balloting.
Electoral officials also said they want to annul legislative elections in seven of Congo's 169 voting districts and prosecute a dozen candidates accused of introducing irregularities and violence.
Local and international observers already have denounced the Nov. 28 elections for the president and 500 national assembly seats, saying they were too flawed.
Critics say any results issued now are unreliable, given that millions of voters were unable to cast ballots, hundreds of thousands of ballots have been tampered with and a similar amount have gone missing. Even before voting began, the election was compromised by violence and intimidation of the opposition by security forces and a flawed voters roll.
The electoral commission said that President Joseph Kabila's party is leading the national assembly race with 58 of 432 seats counted. They said opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi's party has won 34 seats. A coalition of parties that have governed in a sometimes uneasy alliance with Kabila has won 150 seats to 69 for the three main opposition parties, according to the results.
That indicated some heavy losses for Kabila, whose party held 111 seats in the previous parliament.
Electoral commission president, the Rev. Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, told reporters the results were weeks late because his officers had examined hundreds of complaints of irregularities that required them to deploy across the massive country, which covers an area the size of Western Europe.
Last week, leaders of Congo's powerful Roman Catholic Church called for Ngoy Mulunda and other commissioners to address "serious errors" in the results, or resign.
Ngoy Mulunda said any further complaints about results should be taken to the Supreme Court, which the commission will ask to cancel the elections in seven voting districts in five southern and eastern provinces.
Tshisekedi already has disputed the presidential vote and declared himself president. Since then, he has been under a form of house arrest, with soldiers preventing visitors from entering his home.
Soldiers also have forcefully halted protests. Calls by civil society and church leaders for new elections or a re-count are being ignored.
In a bid to help save at least the legislative elections, the United States sent electoral officials to help monitor belated counting of ballots. But they left in disgust, saying there was nothing they could do to salvage the process.
The November election was only the second democratic vote in Congo's 51-year history, and the first to be organized by the Congolese government. The 2006 election was organized by the U.N. mission in Congo.
Congo, which is sub-Saharan Africa's largest country, has suffered decades of dictatorship and civil war. The country's east is still wracked by violence from a myriad of militias and rebel groups.
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