Opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi has won the Democratic Republic of Congo’s tightly contested presidential vote, the electoral commission says.

The provisional result puts him ahead of rival opposition candidate Martin Fayulu who has denounced it as a fraud.

France has also questioned the outcome.

If confirmed, Mr Tshisekedi will be the first opposition challenger to win since the DR Congo gained independence.

Current President Joseph Kabila is stepping down after 18 years in office.

DR Congo is a country the size of Western Europe and Mr Kabila had promised its first orderly transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.

The election outcome was initially expected to be announced on Sunday. The interim result can still be challenged.

In the early hours of Thursday the head of DR Congo’s National Electoral Commission (Ceni), Corneille Nangaa, said Mr Tshisekedi had received 38.5% of the vote and had been “provisionally declared the elected president”.

Mr Tshisekedi, who is the son of late veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, told supporters at his Union for Democracy and Social Progress party headquarters in Kinshasa that Mr Kabila should no longer be seen as a rival.

“I pay tribute to President Joseph Kabila and today we should no longer see him as an adversary, but rather, a partner in democratic change in our country,” he said.

Mr Tshisekedi has promised to make the fight against poverty his priority.

Mr Fayulu, a former oil tycoon, dismissed the results as having “nothing to do with the truth”.

“The Congolese people will never accept such a fraud,” he told the BBC, adding: “Felix Tshisekedi never got 7 million votes. Where did he get them from?”

And France appeared to back him.

“We must have clarity on these results, which are the opposite to what we expected,” Foreign Minister Yves Le Drian told CNews.

He said the Catholic Church, which had 40,000 observers at the election, had found “completely different” results.

Source:BBC