All Kinshasa press attention is focused the DRC Supreme Court's ruling yesterday that confirmed Joseph Kabila's victory in the 29 October runoff presidential election.

The main headline in L'Observateur reads "Joseph Kabila: President." La Référence Plus elaborates on this, saying the Supreme Court on Monday confirmed "Joseph Kabila's victory with 58.5 percent of the vote against 41.95 percent for his rival Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo". Thus, Joseph Kabila becomes "the first elected president of the 3rd Republic and the fourth post-independence president,... after Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Mobutu Sese Seko and Laurent-Désiré Kabila," notes Le Potentiel, pointing out that unlike his predecessors, Joseph Kabila become the first president "to be elected by direct universal suffrage."

According to Le Phare, "nobody really had any illusions as to what the Supreme Court's verdict" was going to be, because "the conduct of the [Court] hearings, the prosecution's opinions and the walkout by lawyers for [Bemba's] MLC [party], all were telling signs" of what the final outcome was going to be.

Despite that, "Joseph Kabila's supporters poured into the streets of Kinshasa, singing and dancing in his honour," accord to La Référence Plus. "Chaos did not erupt as the prophets of doom had foretold," notes the paper, saying "Kinshasa residents have now understood that lootings and other forms of disorder would get the country nowhere".

Le Phare notes: "All day yesterday, the MLC made several appeals to the population to stay calm whatever verdict the Supreme Court came up with."

With Joseph Kabila's election, "a long period of fear and uncertainty has come to an end," Le Potentiel writes. The DRC just "turned a dark page of its history to open a new chapter of hope," the paper says, adding it is up to "the Congolese to draw useful lessons from these dark years so they may meet the challenges of peace, security, stability and national reconciliation."