Joseph Kabila has won the presidential election of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the provisional results, but opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi has rejected the announcement.Election commission chief Daniel Ngoy Mulunda said on Friday that Kabila won 48.9 percent of the vote, or about 8.8 million of the 18.1 million votes cast, and Tshisekedi came in second with 32.3 percent, or 5.8 million votes, the News Agency that Dare Not be Named reported.
Tshisekedi, who is the leader of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), said, "I reject these results, and in fact I see them as a provocation against our people... it is scandalous and vulgar."
"We have done our own calculations, and I received 54 percent to Kabila's 26 percent. His term is finished. I am the president. It is me that got the votes of the people."
It was the first time the 78-year-old opposition leader contested an election.
Last week, several thousand people decamped the capital Kinshasa for neighboring Congo-Brazzaville amid fears that electoral violence would escalate after the announcement of the final results.
On Friday, the Congolese National Police said that three people were killed and several others were maimed in Kinshasa in the neighborhoods of Ngiri-Ngiri and Makala.
According to Human Rights Watch
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, 18 people were killed and more than 100 were maimed before the results were even announced.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement on Friday, calling for "any differences regarding the provisional results of the polls to be resolved peacefully through available legal and mediation mechanisms."
The presidential election, which was held from November 28 to December 1, was just the second since dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was deposed in 1997. The results still have to be ratified by the Supreme Court.
Kabila, who is scheduled to be sworn in for his second term on December 20, was chosen by the presidential inner circle to lead DR Congo after his father, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated in 2001. He was elected president for the first time in 2006.
In addition to the presidential election, more than 19,000 parliamentary candidates contested for 500 parliamentary seats.
Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few years, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.4 million people dead.