Results??

Unauthorised results of the election have been pouring in. We hear that if you add up the results of individual polling stations, Kabila has been ousted by Tshisekedi. On Thursday Tshisekedi stops claiming that the election has been a fraud and proclaims himself president.

Suddenly, people who were aligned to Kabila start to worry. Panic buying of airline seats starts as people demand to be got out – anywhere will do. The travel agent tells us, hush hush, that Kabila’s wife is on the flight to Brussels on Friday night.

The office’s evacuation plans are notched up: someone is booking us hotel rooms in Brazzaville, and a boat is ready to take us across when need be.

The Friday evening barbecue at the Embassy is well attended, with only one topic of conversation: what’s going to happen. The Ambassador has met Tshisekedi: he’s in a militant mood, and not particularly interested in anything a foreigner might want to say, and when a bunch of ambassadors tell him to accept the result peacefully he is outraged.

Evidently, the way things are going does not please Kabila. The government machine jumps into action: to prove that Tshisekedi is lying the Electoral Commission changes its policy of delaying the results until they are complete, and starts to release them in stages. Each batch is selectively designed to show that Kabila is just in the lead. Conspicuously, there are hardly any results from Kinshasa, where we know Tshisekedi has a massive lead.

That’s not all. To stop (pro-Tshisekedi) rumours, the government closes down the text messaging (SMS) service on the mobile phone networks. This truly puts the cat among the pigeons as far as the safety plans are concerned, which are largely based on SMS systems. I’ve got a Blackberry which has its patent messaging system, so can still receive messages from the office. But Embassy contingency plans to contact staff and citizens in the event of a real emergency are now useless.

It is Saturday morning. The SMS system is dead, and it is pouring with rain. We go shopping. As I step out of my car a policeman offers to share his umbrella with me. It is a small woman’s retractable model and is hardly big enough to cover us both, so he says “you have it” and I take it, with him, slightly sodden, a step or two behind. This, one might say, is public service at its best, but in fact it’s his latest (and clever) money making scheme: brolly hiring. I give him a nice tip and everyone’s happy.

Inside the shop everything seems completely normal. No signs of panic buying, and none of the empty shelves that I’ve seen in similar situations elsewhere, though we make our contribution by panic buying Christmas decorations.

That evening, we go to a restaurant we have never tried before. It’s right in the centre of town, but all is calm. The restaurant is busy. The proprietor proudly shows us his night club next door. Even though it is early, it’s buzzing, in proper Kinshasa style.

The warning messages continue to arrive, but seem oddly out of tune with reality. Are the fears of securocrats misplaced, or is this still the lull before the storm?