2006 Democratic Republic of the Congo general election

General elections were held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 30 July 2006. They were the first multiparty elections in the country in 41 years, and the first since the overthrow of longtime leader Mobutu Sese Seko nine years earlier. Voters went to the polls to elect both a new President of the Republic and a new National Assembly, the lower-house of the Parliament. Incumbent president Joseph Kabila, who led the transitional government formed after the Second Congo War, ran as an independent candidate and defeated Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC). Kabila was inaugurated for his first term under the country's new constitution on 6 December 2006.

The polls were boycotted by the veteran opposition leader, Étienne Tshisekedi, and his party Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UPDS), who complained of fraud. The international community donated $460 million to fund the elections and deployed the world's largest UN peacekeeping operation, MONUC, to help the stability of the election. While the election was conducted relatively peacefully, the collection of the results proved chaotic, leading to armed clashes and growing fears of instability. As a result, DRC election officials announced that they would begin to release partial results earlier instead of only announcing the final count on 20 August.

On 20 August, the CEI released its full provisional presidential election results, indicating that neither candidate was able to secure a majority, which led to a run-off election on 29 October. On that day, voters went to the polls to vote in:

• a run-off election for the Presidency, as no candidate had obtained more than 50 percent of the first-round vote.
• an election of provincial parliaments

On 15 November, the CEI released its full provisional results for the presidential election's second round, indicating that Joseph Kabila had won with 58.05 percent. The results were, however, rejected by Bemba who claimed irregularities. On 27 November, the DRC Supreme Court confirmed that Kabila had won the election, and he was sworn in as president on 6 December.

The election results reflected the east-west divide in the DRC, with the first round seeing Kabila receiving at least 70 percent of the vote in the eastern provinces of Orientale, Katanga, South Kivu, North Kivu and Maniema. Bemba received more votes in the west, especially in Kinshasa, Bas-Congo, Kasaï-Occidental, and Équateur. The second round also saw a similar split and Bemba received nearly 100 percent of the vote in his home province of Équateur.

In the parliamentary elections Kabila's People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) emerged as the largest party, winning 111 of the 500 seats, followed by Bemba's MLC with 64 seats. Kabila's coalition, the Alliance of the Presidential Majority (AMP), was later joined by several other parties, notably Antoine Gizenga's Unified Lumumbist Party and Nzanga Mobutu's Union of Mobutist Democrats, giving it a majority in the National Assembly.