After month of laborious preparations, polling stations opened in the Democrat Republic of Congo, DRC, on November 28.

Across the country, 32 million voters were eligible to take part in joint presidential and parliamentary elections, the second to take place since the end of DRC’s long and bloody civil war.

While some parts of the country including the capital Kinshasa were hit by violence on election day, the eastern province of North Kivu was largely quiet.

Twenty-five journalists reporting for IWPR across North and South Kivu noted numerous irregularities and problems. There were clear instances of disorganisation, with voters unable to find their name on electoral lists, and ballot materials failing to arrive at a number of polling stations.

Observers deployed by the numerous political parties were unable to monitor the vote continuously, since only ten were allowed into polling stations at any one time.

Voters who were illiterate or blind were often accompanied into the voting booth by election monitors, raising questions about how just free their choice would be.

In Masisi, an area close to Goma, the main city in North Kivu, IWPR reporters gathered testimony about people being intimidated into voting for the incumbent president Joseph Kabila.

As election day drew to a close, many people had not yet had a chance to vote and were turned away. Several polling stations remained open past the official closing time, and those that had been unable to function at all opened on November 29 instead, even as early results started coming out.

The official result of the presidential election will be announced on December 6.

Mélanie Gouby is an IWPR journalist and multimedia producer who has been leading IWPR’s transitional justice project in eastern DRC.