Africa, Headlines

POLITICS-DRC: Challenging Times for Election Observers

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jul 19 2006 (IPS) - General elections that loom at the end of the month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) present considerable difficulties to all involved – not least local and foreign observers.

Thousands of observers will be deployed in the vast Central African country to monitor voting when citizens go the polls Jul. 30, says Vincent Tohbi – DRC country director of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in South Africa’s commercial capital, Johannesburg.

This figure includes about 1,200 foreign nationals, who will be hard put to monitor even a fraction of the 52,000 polling stations that EISA says are expected to open.

The organisation is also sending an observer mission to the Congo, composed of 25 representatives of NGOs, bodies that oversee elections, and academic institutions. EISA works to ensure free elections and good governance.

Simply getting observers and election materials to many of the stations poses another daunting task.

“We have a huge infrastructure challenge. The DRC is two times the size of South Africa, but 100 times ‘smaller’ in infrastructure. Most of the roads are not paved,” Tohbi told IPS in a telephone interview from the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, describing the lack of development brought about by three decades of corrupt rule under Mobutu Sese Seko – and two civil wars.

As a result, the main method of transport is by air. “Initially we had 17 planes and helicopters. Now we have 100 with support from South Africa and Angola, which has agreed to deploy four helicopters for the elections,” noted Tohbi.

“In remote areas people use boats, motorcycles and bicycles for transporting election materials like ballot papers.”

The ballot papers were printed and distributed by South Africa at a cost of 50 million dollars, said Tohbi. The budget for the elections is put at 500 million dollars, which is being provided by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.

More than 30 candidates are contesting the presidential poll, including the incumbent – Joseph Kabila – while almost 8,000 others are vying for positions in the 500-seat parliament.

This broad participation has not imbued the election process with legitimacy in the eyes of all, however. The main opposition party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, is boycotting the poll, even though it is the first multi-party election to be occurring in the Congo in 40 years. The group alleges that conditions for a free and fair vote are not in place.

“The challenges are many. It’s not only infrastructure,” said Jean-Marie Gasana from the Africa office of the Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER Africa) – an international coalition of NGOs, governmental and academic institutions that addresses violent conflict. He is preparing to travel to the Ituri region in the troubled east of the DRC to help monitor the elections.

“The next day, after the elections, the problems will be there. There will still be the problems of demobilisation of fighters, lack of development, poverty and the plight of displaced persons,” Gasana told IPS. “We have many IDPs (internally displaced persons) who do not know where to vote.”

About 1.5 million people have been displaced by conflict in the DRC, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, while nearly four million died during the war that raged from 1998 to 2002 – many as a result of conflict-induced disease and food shortages.

“We are concerned about the legitimacy of the polls: whether people will acknowledge (the) results,” said Tohbi said. “If not, the results of the elections will be useless.”

About 25.7 million of the DRC’s 60 million inhabitants are expected to vote in the elections, according to the Independent Electoral Commission – which is overseeing the polls.

If none of the presidential candidates emerges with more than 50 percent of the vote in the Jul. 30 poll, then the two candidates with the most ballots will face off in another election scheduled for Oct. 15, with final results expected at the end of November.

The poll will mark an end to three years of transitional government during which combatants from the conflict that gripped eastern DRC from the late 1990s were supposed to be disarmed – and many reintegrated back into society.

While thousands are reported to have left the battlefield, other fighters remain at large in the east – this despite the presence of 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers. Reports Tuesday noted that unidentified gunmen had killed about seven people at an election rally in North Kivu province.

The conflict in eastern DRC pitted Ugandan- and Rwandan-backed rebels against government forces supported by Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia. Both sides have been implicated in exploitation of the Congo’s extensive mineral resources.

Uganda and Rwanda had previously backed the then president of the DRC, Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001, and succeeded by his son – Joseph.

The DRC was formerly a Belgian colony. It gained independence in 1960.

 
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