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Article: Waiting for the democratic dividend: DR Congo's first democratic election for more than 40 years must be judged a success. The result has been widely accepted and the conflagration that many expected has failed to materialise. Will this central African country now settle down to reap the economic benefits of democratisation? Report by Neil Ford.(DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO)
- Article from:
- African Business
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 IC Publications Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When the polls closed, the result of the second round ballot was fairly clear. The incumbent, Joseph Kabila, had won with 58.05% of the vote to Jean-Pierre Bemba's 41.95%.
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The result was also geographically clear. Bemba dominated in the western half of the country, including in Kinshasa, while Kabila secured the lion's share of the vote in the north-east and south-east of the country. This has been portrayed as a clear split between the Swahili-speaking east and the Lingala west, although DR Congo's cultural and linguistic divisions are a little more complicated than that.
The table below shows ...