{"id":27300,"date":"2018-12-29T05:24:01","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T05:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27300"},"modified":"2018-12-29T05:24:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T05:24:01","slug":"democratic-republic-of-the-congo-elections-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27300","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Republic of the Congo: Elections 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"44.3945868946\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The Democratic Republic of Congo (<a class=\"InternalLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/democratic-republic-congo.html\">DRC<\/a>) will hold its long-delayed general elections on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The Congolese government said it couldn&#8217;t hold the vote on time because it could not afford the $1.8bn bill needed for the elections.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The elections will be conducted nationwide, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/12\/dr-congo-election-board-delays-vote-cities-181226102920747.html\">except three cities<\/a> which are expected to vote in March 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Current President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/africa\/2018\/12\/drc-joseph-kabila-legacy-18-years-power-181224090825920.html\">Joseph Kabila<\/a>, 47, has been in power since January 2001, after his father, former President Laurent Kabila, was assassinated by one of his bodyguards.<\/p>\n<p>Kabila&#8217;s second and final term in office ended two years ago, but he remained in power, thanks to a caretaker clause in the constitution. Observers are worried that he would try to stay on.<\/p>\n<p>Deadly protests against his rule and pressure from the international community mounted until he recently announced that he will not be running in the election.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty-one presidential candidates have been approved for the single-round contest. Voters will also cast their ballots for 34,900 candidates running for 500 national and 715 provincial seats.<\/p>\n<p>More than 46 million people are registered to vote, the run-up to which was marked by deadly violence.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/12\/fire-destroys-thousands-voting-machines-dr-congo-181213072729736.html\">Fire destroyed<\/a> about 8,000 electronic voting machines earlier this month, representing two-thirds of the total required for capital Kinshasa, according to the electoral commission.<\/p>\n<p>The Congolese capital is home to about 15 percent of the electorate.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"imagecontainer item\" data-image-url=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2018\/12\/28\/96de76ad470e456380f819f8acd36b0a_6.jpg\">\n<table class=\"image\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2018\/12\/28\/96de76ad470e456380f819f8acd36b0a_6.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"caption\">\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will hold its long-delayed general elections on Sunday. The Congolese government said it couldn&#8217;t hold the vote on time because it could not afford the $1.8bn bill needed for the elections. The elections will be conducted nationwide, except three cities which are expected to vote in March 2019.\u00a0 Current&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}