Far from unifying the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, Sunday's historic elections have highlighted the deep division between the east and west of the vast former Belgian colony.
The July 30th polls were meant to heal wounds after a brutal 1998-2003 war which tore apart Congo's ageing infrastructure and killed four million people, mostly from hunger and disease.
Results are still weeks away but indicators point to a landslide victory for President Joseph Kabila in his native Swahili-speaking east while former rebel and Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba is ahead in the west, where Lingala is spoken.
"The DR Congo Cut In Two" read a headline in Le Phare, a Kinshasa daily. Diplomats and analysts warned the trend could encourage politicians to exploit ethnic differences and make the central African state ungovernable for whoever wins the presidency. "There is nothing that new in this phenomenon. What has happened is that the election has crystallised and quantified this divide," said Bob Kabamba, a Congolese politics professor.
"The fear I have is that it could undermine the legitimacy of whoever wins. People will either say 'he is a president for the East' or 'he is a president for the West'." Power shifts in the turbulent mineral-rich country's history can be charted along ethnic and linguistic lines.
Belgian colonial administrators ensured Lingala, from the west, became the language of power and the army. The trend continued under the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who came from the northwestern province of Equateur.
But the tables were turned when Laurent Kabila, Joseph's father, marched across the former Zaire from the east, accompanied by a band of Swahili-speaking child soldiers who helped him overthrow Mobutu in 1997.