(Updates with Bemba winning seat) By Joe Bavier KINSHASA, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Defeated Congolese presidential contender Jean-Pierre Bemba won a Senate seat on Friday that will keep him on the political stage as an opponent of President Joseph Kabila, election officials said. The former rebel leader was one of eight new senators for Kinshasa appointed in elections for the 108-seat upper house. Friday's senatorial vote followed historic presidential and parliamentary elections last year in Democratic Republic of Congo. These were the first free democratic polls held in more than four decades in the former Belgian Congo. The 108 Senate members were chosen by newly sworn-in members of Congo's 11 provincial assemblies, out of 1,124 candidates. In provisional results read by election officials, Bemba and two allies from his Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) party won three of the eight Senate seats for the capital Kinshasa. Pro-Kabila candidates also won three. Provisional national results would be announced on Saturday, Congo's electoral commission said. Candidates will then have two months to lodge complaints before the results are certified by the Supreme Court. Bemba, more popular in Kinshasa than Kabila, lost to the incumbent head of state in a tense Oct. 29 presidential run-off vote after an election process marked by sporadic violence. Soldiers loyal to the two rivals fought several gunbattles in the sprawling riverside city. Bemba, who received just under 42 percent of the presidential votes, initially complained of cheating but later accepted defeat, saying he would lead the political opposition. "As a senator he can remain on the national stage," said Jason Stearns, a Nairobi-based senior analyst with the International Crisis Group think-tank. Bemba's decision late last year to join the opposition rather than challenge the outcome of the presidential poll was a relief to many in Congo, where a 1998-2003 civil war killed an estimated 4 million people, mainly through hunger and disease. Some fear a Bemba-led opposition could be marginalised and even forced back on to the streets, particularly as Kabila's majority in the new parliament has allowed his legislators to try to dominate key commissions. Bemba commands strong support in Kinshasa and other parts of the Lingala-speaking west. In contrast, Kabila speaks poor Lingala and his power base lies mostly among Swahili-speakers in the east of the country.
